GovCon & Public Sector

10:00AM - 5:00PM
Austin, TX
Monday - Nov 16, 2026
Benefits

Marketing & Selling Cybersecurity to Public Sector, Government, Federal, and Critical Infrastructure

Selling cybersecurity and IT services to the federal government and national security organizations is much different than selling in the commercial space. Join a 1-day event - held on Monday, November 16th - created just for those in business development, sales, capture, growth, and marketing to the government and critical infrastructure!

Government Buyer Insights

Learn how government buyers evaluate solutions, build trust, and navigate procurement, compliance, and mission requirements.

Practical Gov/Fed GTM

Get real (and realistic) ideas for positioning, FedRAMP, regulated markets, partnerships, AI, and public sector growth.

Peer Connections

Connect with marketers, sellers, growth leaders, and partners who understand the realities of government GTM.

GovCon 2026 Speakers

Our speakers are experienced government sales, growth, and marketing professionals.

Juliana Slye

Founder and CEO

Government Business Results

Joyjit Roy

Principal Technical Program Manager

Kforce Inc.

Ingrid Velasquez-Woodley

Senior Director of Revenue Strategy

38North Security

Cyrus Walker

Founder and CEO

Data Defenders

Venkata Kartheek Reddy Somasani

Information Technology Security Engineer

City of Dallas

Samaresh Kumar Singh

Principal Engineer - Distributed Systems, Edge AI and AI Governance

HP Inc.

Marissa Salzone

Director of Marketing

Echelon Risk + Cyber

See the 2026 GovCon Agenda Below!

Topic Overview

FedRAMP 20x is triggering a wave of “it’s easier now!” messaging — and it’s going to backfire.

20x doesn’t magically reduce effort; it moves the burden upstream from documentation theatre into engineering reality: continuous signals, continuous change visibility, continuous vulnerability response. That shift changes what buyers need to hear, what proof they’ll ask for, and how your marketing and sales motions should work.

In this session, I’ll break down how we’re positioning FedRAMP 20x at 38North Security to create demand without overpromising: the narrative, the content architecture, the ABM approach, and the practical GTM assets that convert “confused & stalled” teams into discovery calls.

You’ll leave with messaging frameworks, a content blueprint, and a simple way to build credibility in a market that’s drowning in hot takes.

Speakers

Session Agenda

  • A clear “Rev 5 vs 20x” narrative that doesn’t oversimplify (“less paperwork ≠ less work” + how to say it without scaring buyers off).
  • A practical message map: what leaders care about vs what practitioners care about (and how to bridge them).
  • A content system that creates conversion: “Start Here” → deep dives → proof assets → consult CTA (not just blogs for vibes).
  • An ABM play you can copy: segmentation + 6-touch journey structure + outreach pairing that warms accounts without burning lists.
  • What proof looks like in 20x (and what marketers should stop claiming until product/ops can actually deliver it).

Topic Overview

AI adoption in cybersecurity is accelerating, but many organizations struggle to translate technical innovation into clear business value. Based on real-world enterprise deployments across regulated industries, this session explores how AI-driven security automation improves resilience, strengthens brand trust, and supports executive-level risk narratives.

In this session, we will examine how agentic AI frameworks in modern SOC environments affect customer confidence, operational maturity, and strategic differentiation. Attendees will gain practical insights for aligning AI-powered security initiatives with marketing, trust, and growth objectives.

Speakers

Session Agenda

  • 1. How AI-driven SOC automation strengthens brand trust and customer confidence
  • 2. Translating technical AI investments into executive-level business value messaging
  • 3. Aligning security innovation with GTM and trust positioning
  • 4. Governance-aware AI as a differentiator in regulated industries
  • 5. Lessons learned from production AI deployments in financial and insurance sectors

Topic Overview

Municipal water infrastructure has become a prime target for cybercriminals, nation-state actors, and insider threats, making cybersecurity not just an IT concern, but a critical public health imperative. The 2021 Oldsmar, Florida incident, where a hacker attempted to poison a city's water supply by manipulating chemical levels remotely, and the Maroochy Shire breach that released millions of gallons of raw sewage, serve as stark reminders of what is at stake when water utilities remain unprotected.For cybersecurity professionals working on the go-to-market and business side of the industry, water utilities represent one of the most compelling and underserved market opportunities today. Thousands of municipal water systems nationwide operate with aging infrastructure, limited security budgets, and minimal OT specific expertise, creating both significant risk and significant demand for scalable, practical cybersecurity solutions.This session draws from real-world implementation experience securing water infrastructure for the City of Dallas, covering freshwater treatment plants, wastewater facilities, and flood control systems serving 3.5 million residents. Attendees will gain firsthand insight into how defense in depth strategies, including network segmentation, zero trust architecture, AI powered anomaly detection, and secure remote access, were successfully deployed across legacy operational technology environments without a single moment of unplanned downtime.Beyond the technical framework, this presentation unpacks the unique challenges of selling and marketing cybersecurity solutions to water utilities: navigating procurement cycles, communicating risk to non-technical municipal executives, and aligning solutions with regulatory mandates such as NIST SP 800-82 and ISA/IEC 62443.Whether you are crafting go-to-market strategy, building sales narratives, or developing content targeting critical infrastructure clients, this session delivers actionable intelligence to help cybersecurity organizations position their solutions effectively in one of the most important and fastest growing verticals in the industry.

Speakers

Session Agenda

  • 1. Understanding how municipal water utility decision makers think, what drives their purchasing decisions, and how to navigate complex public sector procurement cycles to position cybersecurity solutions effectively.
  • 2. Translating OT and ICS cybersecurity risks into business value language that resonates with non-technical municipal executives, city councils, and budget approvers to accelerate sales conversations.
  • 3. Applying real world proof points from the City of Dallas securing critical water infrastructure for 3.5 million residents, demonstrating how documented outcomes and zero downtime deployments build buyer confidence and trust.
  • 4. Leveraging compliance mandates such as NIST SP 800-82 and ISA/IEC 62443 as natural entry points for cybersecurity vendors and aligning marketing messaging and sales narratives around regulatory urgency.
  • 5. Sizing the water utility cybersecurity market opportunity, including thousands of underserved small and mid-sized utilities lacking dedicated security resources, and crafting scalable go-to-market strategies to reach them effectively.

Topic Overview

Most cybersecurity firms compete on the same claims: advanced detection, rapid response, superior technology. The result is a market where every vendor sounds identical and differentiation lives almost entirely in marketing spend. I built a different kind of firm.

Data Defenders serves municipalities, counties, nonprofits, and healthcare organizations, the organizations most cybersecurity vendors do not pursue. Six years ago, I entered into a managed security engagement with a mid-size Illinois city. I designed the governance architecture, managed dual IT and OT operations, and ran the program from implementation through sustained operations. That engagement produced 35,331 threats detected and mitigated, 351 high-severity threats eliminated, zero major security incidents declared, and operating costs 77% below what an equivalent in-house Security Operations Center would have required.

Those are not marketing claims. They are documented operational outcomes, and they have produced the thing most cybersecurity firms spend their entire marketing budget trying to manufacture: proof.

This session examines what six years of operating in the market nobody builds for teaches about firm positioning, client delivery, and the strategic value of doing the work before writing the case study.

Speakers

Session Agenda

  • 1. Why municipalities, nonprofits, and healthcare organizations represent a defensible, structurally underserved market and the firm-building case for pursuing the clients your competitors skip.
  • 2. What a six-year managed security engagement in a mid-size U.S. municipality actually produced, with specific outcome data across threat detection, severity elimination, incident performance, and cost economics.
  • 3. The governance architecture that made a dual-scope (IT + OT) municipal engagement sustainable and what cybersecurity firm CEOs can extract from it for their own client delivery models.
  • 4. Why documented operational proof is a more durable differentiator than product feature marketing, and the specific conditions that allow a firm to claim it credibly.
  • 5. The strategic positioning case for building a cybersecurity firm with a defined, underserved market rather than competing on brand volume in the enterprise segment.

Topic Overview

What if your newest “employees” could onboard instantly, retain institutional knowledge, collaborate across departments, and scale your team’s expertise 24/7?

In this session, Juliana Slye of Government Business Results (GBR) will demonstrate how GBR is building an interconnected ecosystem of custom GPTs that function like specialized digital team members across marketing, proposal development, operations, research, and business growth.

These GPTs go far beyond simple chatbots. Juliana has developed role-based AI systems, including a Go-To-Market Strategist, Federal Product Marketer, Copy Editor, Brand Assistant, and even a “Condenser” designed to simplify overly complex or lengthy content. Each GPT is built with a distinct function, voice, workflow, and expertise area, allowing them to work independently or collaboratively as part of a layered AI operational framework.

Rather than using AI as a standalone tool, GBR has developed GPT systems that build on one another to create scalable workflows that accelerate onboarding, improve consistency, reduce bottlenecks, and preserve institutional knowledge across the organization.

Attendees will learn how to design GPTs that mirror real employee functions, create AI systems that collaborate together effectively, and establish a practical framework for scaling expertise across a growing organization without sacrificing quality, brand integrity, or operational efficiency.

This session is designed for GovCon leaders, marketers, operations teams, and growth strategists who want to move beyond AI experimentation and into practical implementation that drives measurable business impact.

Speakers

Session Agenda

  • How to structure GPTs as specialized “AI employees” with defined business functions
  • The difference between standalone GPTs and layered AI systems that collaborate together
  • Practical lessons learned from implementing GPT workflows inside a GovCon-focused organization
  • A roadmap for organizations wanting to scale operations with often limited resources

Topic Overview

There's a moment every marketing leader knows: your team is talented, your campaigns are running, and somehow the CEO still isn't sure what marketing is actually doing for the business.

This session is about making sure that moment never happens again.

The framework is built around two connected tools: a KPI-driven strategic roadmap and a quarterly marketing review (QMR) that together become the operating system for your entire marketing org. The roadmap is built from the top down: executive business goals translated into channel-level KPIs that every team member owns. The QMR is where those KPIs are reported, defended, and connected back to strategy by everyone.

But the deeper purpose of this framework isn't just accountability. It's orientation. When your team is heads-down in the minutiae, the roadmap is the hundred-thousand-foot view that answers the question every campaign should be asking: does this move our metrics? Creativity doesn't go away. Ideas still matter. But they get filtered through the strategy, not in spite of it.

And for the leader in the room who is the head of marketing with or without the title, this framework does something else entirely. You already operating at the executive level and this proves it. The C-suite, sales, finance, and new leadership will see a marketing org that isn't just executing tasks but executing a vision, with full command of how marketing connects to revenue, operations, services, and growth.

If you want Marketing off the CEO’s worry list, this is how you build the team that makes it possible.

Speakers

Session Agenda

  • Attendees will learn how to:
  • Build a strategic marketing roadmap anchored in executive goals
  • Distribute KPI ownership across your team from intern to vendor
  • Design a QMR that unifies siloed teams and earns C-suite trust
  • Use the QMR as an onboarding and culture-building tool
  • Position yourself as an executive leader through the work you are already doing
"The sessions alone are worth it, but connecting, reconnecting, and making new friends in our quirky industry is priceless."

Becca Chambers

CMO at Scale Venture Partners

Check Out Our 1-Day and Full Conference Passes Below

GovCon attendees with a Full Conference Pass can attend the rest of CyberMarketingCon:

Zach Deming

VP, Corporate & Product Marketing

Horizon3

Yuliya Gorenko

Influencer Marketing Director

Mischka

Yonesy Núñez

CISO

Surf AI

Yehuda Cagen

Head of Marketing

Rainscales

Will Jardine

Strategist

Miscreants

Virginia Peterson

SVP, Marketing

ZeroFox

Venkata Kartheek Reddy Somasani

Information Technology Security Engineer

City of Dallas

Varun Prasad

Managing Director, Third Party Attestation

BDO

Valerie Zargarpur

Head of Marketing

Monad

Umang Barman

Sr. Director of PMM

Zscaler

Tony Thompson

Life-Long Cyber Marketer & Chief Marketing Officer

Seemplicity

Theresa Lanowitz

Cybersecurity Analyst

Omdia

Steve Piper

Founder & CEO

CyberEdge Group

Stephen van der Heijden

Chief Innovation and AI Officer

Sendmarc

Stephanie Corby

VP, Market Lead, IT/Tech Vertical

Future B2B

Solange Deschâtres

Head of Marketing

Energize Marketing

Shlomi Ashkenazy

Positioning Advisor, Head of Marketing

Rein Security

Seth Steinman

VP, Marketing

PreVeil

Scott Johnson

Founder

Amplifyed

Sarah Wallek

Head of Demand-Gen

Jazz

Sameer Sait

CISO

Stanley 1913

Samaresh Kumar Singh

Principal Engineer - Distributed Systems, Edge AI and AI Governance

HP Inc.

Saikrishna Chavali

Product Marketing

Ron Eddings

Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Hacker Valley Media

Rebekah McAdams

Vice President, Field, Channel, and Corporate Events Marketing

Varonis

Raquel Arruda

Marketing Manager

KnowBe4

Randall Degges

VP, AI Engineering & Developer Relations

Snyk

Paul Innella

CEO

TDI

Nicole Gates

VP of Global Growth Marketing

Varonis

Nate Burke

Chief Marketing Officer

7AI

MJ Kaufmann

CEO

Write Alchemist

Missi Carmen

Chief Revenue Officer

Safetica

Mike Lyborg

CISO

Swimlane

Mike D'Agostino

General Manager

ISMG

Michelle Radlowski

VP, Field & Partner Marketing

Vertex, Inc

Matt Johansen

Social Media Creator

Cybersecurity

Mate Benedek

VP of Marketing

Axoflow

Mary Yang

Chief Marketing Officer / fCMO

Momentum StoryWorks

Marissa Salzone

Director of Marketing

Echelon Risk + Cyber

Mariana Padilla

Community Evangelist

Harmonic Security

Mariana Doncel

Head of Product Marketing

HackTheBox

Maisa Fernandez

Senior Director of Global Partner Marketing

Palo Alto Networks

Madeline Lawrence

Co-Founder & CGO

Aikido Security

Linda Sim

Vice President, Global Growth and Revenue Marketing

Stellar Cyber

Lexi Croisdale

Director of Global Content Marketing

Varonis

Krissy Camacho

Founder & CEO

Tricrest Growth Advisors

Kerry Guard

CEO

MKG Marketing

Kelsea Morrison

Director of Marketing Operations

Varonis

Keith Ward

IT/Tech Content Host

Future B2B/ActualTech Media

Kat Lewis

Chief Marketing Officer

OPSWAT

Kate Turchin

Senior Director of Growth

Atico ATX

Katelyn Holbrook

Chief Client Officer

V2 Communications

Karen Buffo

Chief Marketing Officer

Veracode

Juliana Slye

Founder and CEO

Government Business Results

Joyjit Roy

Principal Technical Program Manager

Kforce Inc.

Joy Hays

SVP, Marketing and Communications

Center for Internet Security

Joseph Blankenship

VP Research Director

Forrester

John Knightly

CMO

Netwrix Corporation

Joe Cicero

Chief Marketing Officer

Security Risk Advisors

Jocelyn Disque

Vice President

Touchdown PR

Jessica Ray

Chief Marketing Officer & GTM Advisor

DTEX

Jeanette Stepanchuk

Co-founder & Head of Demand Gen

Cusp GTM

Jasmin Ozeri

VP of Marketing at Orchid Security | Former Head of Strategic Events at Wiz

Orchid Security Ex-Wiz

Jade Hill

Senior Director, Corporate Marketing

Drata

Jaakko Jalkanen

Head of Marketing

WithSecure

Ingrid Velasquez-Woodley

Senior Director of Revenue Strategy

38North Security

Idan Gol

CMO

OX Security

Hitendar Sethi

Director Product Marketing, AI Security

Palo Alto Networks

Heather Daval

Public Relations

Pentera

Gonçalo Prates

Head of Performance

AdConversion

Gianna Whitver

CEO and Co founder

Cybersecurity Marketing Society

Gerald Auger

Founder

Simply Cyber

Gary Robbins

CEO

FOURCORTERS

Fred Saunders

VP of Marketing

OneTrust

Fari Banimahd-Mansur

Global Campaign Lead - Core Portfolio

CrowdStrike

Fabi Rocha

Field & Partner Marketing Manager, West Coast & LATAM

Snyk

Eran Kinsbruner

VP of Product Marketing

Checkmarx

Emily Rosenfield

Marketing Director

Fig

Don Jeter

CMO

Torq

Deepika D’Souza

Senior Marketing Communication Manager

Endor Labs

Deb Wolf

CMO

Dataminr

David Spark

Producer/Host

CISO Series

David Koke

Head of Marketing

Intruder

David J Ebner

President

Content Workshop

Danny Miller

Director of Marketing, Check Point Exposure Management

Check Point

Danielle Guetta

VP Marketing

Jazz Security

Cyrus Walker

Founder and CEO

Data Defenders

Courtney Chatterton

Marketing Manager

Miscreants

Confidence Staveley

Multi-Award Winning Cybersecurity Leader

Confidence Staveley

Christine Elswick

Managing Director

Highwire PR

Christine Bartlett

SVP, Marketing

Hack The Box

Charles Gold

4x Cyber CMO / Founder

CyberG2M Advisors

Caitlin Sarian

Founder and Executive Director

Cybersecurity Girl

Bronwen Hudson

Marketing Lead and Director of Vibes

Reveal Risk

Brittany Cannon

Sr Director of Marketing

Crash Override

Brian Reed

Chief Market Officer

Corsha

Brian Brushwood

Social Engineering Educator & Host

Scam Nation

Brendan Hann

Senior Product Marketing Manager

Snyk

Brandon Hoe

The Early-stage Cybersecurity Marketing Leader

Seed to Series A

Becca Chambers

CMO

Scale Venture Partners

See You Soon!