The CyberMarketingCon
2026 Agenda
Please note that session times and dates may change.
High Level Schedule: When should I arrive?
To experience the whole conference, plan to arrive in the late morning on Sunday, November 15 and leave late afternoon on Wednesday, November 18 (or stay over to Thursday if you would like or are attending our CEO-Founder-Investor Dinner!)
Sunday - 11/15
Sunday will be a day of workshops and our opening night reception! Plan to arrive around in the late morning or early afternoon if you don't want to miss our 3 hands-on workshops, which start at 1pm CT. Opening night reception starts around 7pm CT.
Monday - 11/16
We kickoff with a keynote at 8:45am CT. Sessions, workshops, and networking throughout the day, including our GovCon Summit. We end the day with a group outing!
Tuesday - 11/17
Today we have sessions, workshops, and networking, plus our CyberCMO Summit; the day kicks off at 9am CT. Tonight we will have multiple activities and dinners.
Wednesday - 11/18
Our final keynote will kick off at 9am CT. Today we will have a three-quarters day of sessions, workshops, and our closing remarks end at 3:30pm CT. Founders, CEOs, and Investors may attend our CyberCEO Dinner at 5:30pm CT.
Note on event times
Event times are subject to change and may not reflect the most up-to-date schedule. Please refer to the conference event app VirtualPro for the latest and most accurate times.
Sunday

Registration Desk Open!
Stop by the Registration Desk on the 2nd Floor Foyer and pick up your badge, swag bag, official conference notebook, and official conference t-shirt!
Explore the Expo Hall, the Fun Station, and join one of the workshops that we have set up on Sunday!
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Claude Beginner Workshop
Curious about Claude but not quite sure what to do beyond opening a chat and asking it questions? This hands-on beginner workshop is for you.
Designed specifically for cybersecurity marketers at CyberMarketingCon, this session will help you get comfortable using Claude for real marketing work — without requiring any technical or AI expertise.
We’ll cover the basics of how to work with Claude effectively, how to give it the context and direction it needs, and how to start using it across everyday workflows like research, campaign planning, content development, messaging, analysis, and more.
You’ll work through practical examples alongside other cybersecurity marketers and leave with ideas you can put to work immediately.
Bring your laptop and your corporate or personal Claude account. No AI expertise required!
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Claude Intermediate Workshop
Ready to move beyond one-off chats and start building repeatable AI workflows?
This hands-on workshop is designed for cybersecurity marketers at CyberMarketingCon who already use Claude and want to take the next step: turning the work you do repeatedly into reusable systems.
We’ll focus heavily on Claude Skills—what they are, when to use them, and how to build them around real cybersecurity marketing workflows. We’ll also explore more advanced ways to structure Claude around your work, connect context and resources, and create repeatable processes that can help you and your team work faster and more consistently.
Rather than spending the session perfecting individual prompts, we’ll think bigger: How do you teach Claude how you work once, then reuse that knowledge again and again?
Bring your laptop, your personal or corporate Claude account, and come ready to build!

Points for Creativity: A Roller Derby Workshop for Cybersecurity Marketers
Cybersecurity marketing is defined by constraint: dense jargon, complex concepts, and audiences who demand precision. The challenge isn’t a lack of creativity; it’s finding space to play, experiment, and make ideas feel truly memorable inside those constraints. This workshop is designed as a creative reset for marketers whose brains have been on “perform under pressure” for a little too long… or those who know they are over-relying on AI for tasks that used to feel fun.
Using the bold, irreverent naming culture of roller derby as our playground—think Penelope Bruise, Hermione Danger, Momentum Mori—we’ll explore what happens when you step away from AI and lean back pure sporting instinct. We’ll treat derby naming as a proxy for branding; names must instantly signal identity, tell a mini-story, and provoke a reaction, just like the best campaigns.
The workshop starts with a short individual warm-up to get people out of polished marketing mode and into free thinking. Attendees will quickly jot down the words, frustrations, and ideas that feel most “stuck” or overused in their day-to-day work—terms they’re tired of, value props that feel flat, or product areas that feel impossible to make exciting. This becomes our raw material.
From there, we’ll move into guided prompts such as:* “If this product or problem were a derby skater, what kind of troublemaker would they be?”* “If you could lean into FUD as a joke, what would you really call this thing?”Participants will then work in small teams, remixing their raw material into surprising combinations: pairing technical jargon with unexpected metaphors, fusing emotional states with security concepts, and bending industry clichés until they become something stranger and more interesting. The focus is less on “getting it right” and more on seeing how far they can stretch a concept without compromising accuracy. Teams will, for example: - Take a word from someone else’s list and combine it with their own to create a new character or brand.- Build a “family” of three related derby names that could all be features of the same product. Additional playful constraints will push their creativity further: limiting word counts, forcing a quick pivot from serious to absurd, or asking teams to defend a ridiculous name as if it were going into a boardroom deck. Each round builds on the last, moving from silly and safe to sharper and more deliberate.
As the workshop progresses, teams will converge on a brand concept and tagline born from this chaos—something that still nods to the original cybersecurity idea but now feels alive, specific, and ideally, fun to scream out loud.
Throughout, we’ll surface the meta-lessons: how constraints can unlock creativity instead of shutting it down, and how embracing a bit of discomfort or a “bad idea” often leads to better ones.
Attendees won’t leave with a rigid framework or a perfect campaign. They’ll leave with at least one absurd-but-delightful concept, a renewed sense of creative confidence, and a reminder that even in a jargon-heavy, high-stakes industry, there’s room to play for points.
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Workshop: Business Networking Pickup Lines
There will be NO NAPPING during this workshop, where everyone will stand up, talk, move around, and learn how to be a professional business “flirt.” We challenge both extroverts and introverts to come to this session and learn how to make in-person cold connections, find *the* person in the room you need to talk to, and qualify someone for a potential business relationship. Check out this video from our workshop at Cyber Marketing Con 2023. If you attended the 2023 workshop, come back again! This brand new workshop is loaded with new exercises.
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Opening Night Welcome Reception
CyberMarketingCon 2026 Welcome Reception: Choose Your Own Character
Every adventure starts with a character. Who will you be?
We’re kicking off CyberMarketingCon 2026 and our theme, Create Your Own Adventure, by inviting you to dress as your favorite character—from literally anything. Anything!
Here's some ideas: Indiana Jones, a medieval knight, an enterprising elf, Taylor Swift, the CISO at the last company that you sold into, Steve Jobs, Skyrim guards, a boxer, or someone entirely of your own creation.
Go all out or come as yourself (if you’re your own favorite character, that's totally fine)!
Join us to meet fellow adventurers, reconnect with friends, and get the CyberMarketingCon conference started!
Monday

Book Your Complimentary Extras & Activities
Make the most of your CyberMarketingCon experience with these complimentary experiences. Reserve your spot in advance—or stop by to see if a walk-in time is available.
Podcast Studio
Record a podcast, interview, or video in a private, professional studio. Four microphones and an AV technician are included, so all you need to bring is your idea. Walk-ins are welcome when the studio is available.
One-on-One Expert Consultations
Get complimentary, personalized advice from experienced professionals—including cybersecurity industry analysts. Book a session to discuss marketing, channel strategy, graphic design, career strategy, your LinkedIn presence, or the cybersecurity market.
Professional Headshot
Refresh your LinkedIn photo, speaker profile, or professional bio with a polished new headshot. Visit the headshot studio in the Expo Hall, located behind the Fornix Marketing booth. Walk-ins are welcome when space is available.
Fun Station & Postcards
Add some personality to your conference badge with stickers, supplies, and badge ribbons—or write and mail a postcard to someone back home. Stop by the Fun Station in the Expo Hall aka Marketing Land whenever you’re ready for a creative break.

Registration Desk Open!
Stop by the Registration Desk on the 2nd Floor Foyer and pick up your badge, swag bag, official conference notebook, and official conference t-shirt!_x000D_

Complimentary Coffee, Breakfast & Expo Hall (Marketing Land) Open!
Good morning, CyberMarketingCon! Join us at 8:00 AM for complimentary coffee and breakfast, catch up with fellow attendees, and explore the booths in the Expo Hall, aka Marketing Land!
We’ll have a set number of breakfasts ready to welcome you, available first come, first served while supplies last.
There’s plenty to explore: send a postcard from our fun station, drop in for a fresh headshot, catch content on the Expo Hall stage, or settle into a seat for networking and meetings. Come grab a bite and start the day with us!

Resist Comfort: How to Block Your Caveman Urge to Be Boring and Do the Best Work of Your Life
As AI makes it easier than ever to create content and campaigns, it's also making it easier than ever to sound exactly like everyone else. The more marketers rely on the same tools, prompts, playbooks, and best practices, the more the market becomes flooded with safe, predictable, and forgettable work.
In this keynote, Nathan Burke makes the bold claim that discomfort is becoming a competitive advantage. That being uncomfortable pushes the boundaries of your work towards what’s actually new, impactful, and worth making.
Drawing from lessons learned building high-growth cybersecurity companies, working within cultures obsessed with continuous improvement, and embracing AI as a force multiplier rather than a crutch, Nathan will explore why complacency is the enemy of great work. He'll share practical ways to seek criticism instead of compliments, challenge conventional thinking, and push beyond the ideas that feel safe.

Virtual Conference - Room 1

Virtual Conference - Room 2

Virtual Conference - Room 3

Nobody Read Your Threat Report. Designing Security Research Practitioners Want to Read
Our industry publishes hundreds of "state of" reports, threat landscapes, and security surveys every year. Practitioners ignore most of them. But there are good news for marketers: The report practitioners actually read, cite, and share is also the one that does the most for your brand and your pipeline. Useful and effective are not opposites. But most security research is just more of the same: Recycled dwell-time stats, leading survey questions, "n=12 CISOs" passed off as data, and a single headline number nobody can map to their own environment.This session is a practical design guide for reports and surveys the practitioner actually wants to read. We'll cover survey design that doesn't generate garbage, metrics that survive a skeptical reader, why segmentation beats a scary average, and how to mine the telemetry you already own instead of running another opinion poll. The goal is produce content practitioners trust — which is the only research that earns the awareness and demand you were after in the first place.

Embed Analyst Interactions In Your Marketing Roadmap
Many marketers view working with industry analysts as a necessary evil and an opportunity to tell them everything about what makes their product or service great. Marketers may only interact with analysts during evaluations, then forget about them until the next one. Getting the most out of industry analysts, however, requires ongoing engagement and listening as much as (or preferably, more than) you speak. Embedding analyst interactions in your marketing roadmap can provide objective third-party insight at crucial points throughout the year. Hear from Recovering Marketer and Forrester VP and Research Director Joseph Blankenship (JB) who was a cybersecurity marketer for 10 years before joining Forrester as an analyst. JB will talk about what worked for him as a marketer, what he sees successful marketers doing as they interact with analysts, and how well-timed analyst interactions can inform your marketing roadmap. Session attendees will learn:•_x0009_Understanding what analysts really do and how they can inform your marketing•_x0009_Creating a playbook for ongoing, successful analyst engagement•_x0009_Embedding analyst interactions to inform your product and messaging launches
Tuesday
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Cybersecurity Songs
I am a Keynote Singer – I perform original songs about Cybersecurity and GTM at tech conferences. I can perform one of the songs in my portfolio, or I can create a custom song specifically for the event based on a theme or message.
Here's one I custom created for Palo Alto Networks:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3kPzyweARA
Here's the AI-Based Sales Song:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yinoSpkrgoc
Here's the GenAI Security Risk Song:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOTT0BaKD98
Here's the Customer Success Song I wrote for AA-ISP:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6D9JWsEG0A
I have more on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@KeynoteSinger/featured
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How to Crack the Market and Gain Momentum as a Startup
Cybersecurity startups don’t fail because of weak demand generation or field marketing. They fail because their positioning is wrong.
We’ve all seen it: a company invests heavily in messaging –whether through a top-tier agency or internal product marketing – and lands on a polished, board-approved narrative. It sounds impressive. It looks great on a pitch deck.
But look closer, and it’s often some version of “the everything platform.”
Then they launch.
Leads come in – but revenue doesn’t. Sales misses targets. Marketing is blamed – but the real issue is that the market doesn’t understand what the company actually does, or who it’s specifically for. Teams scramble to fix campaigns, channels, and conversion rates, when the real problem isn’t execution – it’s positioning.
In this session, Kate Turchin, Senior Director of Growth at Atico ATX, breaks down the most common positioning mistakes she sees across the industry – and why they quietly kill growth.
Drawing from hands-on experience helping startups translate narrative into revenue, Kate introduces the concept of the “narrative wedge”: a sharp, focused position that a company can uniquely own – and win with.
Startups don’t win by casting a wider net. They win by throwing a sharper spear.

How I Hacked the RSA Innovation Sandbox Application
Getting selected for the RSA Innovation Sandbox is the holy grail for early-stage cybersecurity startups - the exposure to customers, industry leaders, and VCs is unmatched. VCs literally treat a finalist selection as a massive validation signal.
But what do you do when you want to apply, but your company hasn't even officially launched yet? I decided to submit my company anyway - and we actually got accepted. It turns out, the "launched" requirement can be interpreted flexibly, and early startups shouldn't self-exclude over narrow technicalities. In this rapid-fire session, I am pulling back the curtain on the exact application strategy I used to sell our vision before we had a fully commercialized product.
I'll share how I structured a winning narrative that prioritized real impact over buzzwords, and how you can turn your next award submission into high-converting marketing collateral.
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How to Build a Threat Research Content Engine and Stop Publishing Into the Void
Threat research is one of the most powerful marketing assets in the industry, but it won’t go anywhere without a production engine behind it.
This session gives a behind-the-scenes look at the content engine behind Varonis Threat Labs. Discover how to translate complex threat research into narratives that enterprise audiences actually trust, that journalists actually want to cover, and that make an impact on deals. It started with world-class research and zero marketing muscle. What came next was equal parts strategy, creativity, and scale.
From editorial standards and thought leadership to CTF activations at Black Hat and DEF CON, this is a behind-the-scenes look at what it really takes to build a threat research brand. Attendees will leave this session with inspiration and a repeatable framework for doing it yourself.

Real-Time ABM for the CISO Who Never Fills Out a Form
The Fortune 1000 CISO is the hardest buyer in B2B to reach. They don't fill out forms, they research in stealth, and they ignore vendors by default. For a year, everything we did online at WithSecure reached exactly five of them. Then we rebuilt our account-based marketing from scratch, and in three months it reached over a hundred of them.I'll show you the machine, honestly and in detail. We watch who lands on the site, identify the account in real time, score it against our target list, and run everything through one central system in Salesforce that moves our ad budget toward the right accounts on its own, fast enough that we can start advertising to a visitor within seconds of their first visit.You'll see the architecture, the numbers, what broke, and the privacy guardrails that keep account-level tracking compliant. It's built on Salesforce, but the thinking ports to any stack.
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Run Your Marketing Department Like a Business: The Operating Rhythm of a CMO Turned CRO
Strong marketing leadership shows up in how you run the function every day: the priorities you set, the numbers you review, the meetings you lead, and the decisions you make.Missi Carmen, CMO turned CRO at Safetica, will share the operating approach she used to run Marketing as a business before her role expanded across the commercial organization. She’ll cover five practical ways marketing leaders can build a stronger operating rhythm and connect execution to business results:
- Build a weekly, monthly, and quarterly cadence that keeps priorities, spending, and execution aligned.
- Run meetings and reviews that lead to decisions, not status updates.
- Focus on the numbers that matter to the business.
- Communicate progress, risks, and tradeoffs in a way that builds confidence with the CEO, CFO, and executive team.
- Create accountability while keeping strategy and execution connected.
This is a practical session for marketing leaders who want to operate as true business partners, not just functional leaders.
Wednesday

Founders & Marketers Mixer
Great companies grow when founders and marketers understand one another. This mixer creates space for cybersecurity founders and marketing professionals to connect, exchange perspectives, and explore the challenges of building a brand, finding product-market fit, earning trust, and scaling growth. It’s also a valuable opportunity for founders seeking marketing talent—and for marketers interested in discovering their next role, client, or collaboration.

VIP CEO Founder & Investor Dinner
Register on LUMA event RSVP platform here: https://luma.com/iegmii4y
After the conclusion of CyberCEO Summit, qualified attendees and local Austin builders are invited to an exceptional gathering of industry leaders at our VIP CEO, Founder & Investor Cocktail & Dinner on Wednesday, November 18th, from 5:00 to 8:00 PM.
This event is reserved for CEOs, Founders, and Investors within the cybersecurity sector, creating a unique space for collaboration and networking.
This dinner is your gateway to connect with fellow top-tier builders in the cybersecurity space. Immerse yourself in a culinary journey that will elevate your palate while fostering engaging discussions about growth and innovation in our dynamic industry!
