Building Trust through Resilience:
Call for Speakers in FIRST Bangalore 2026 Technical Colloquium
Join us in Bangalore to contribute your expertise, connect with leading professionals, and collectively strengthen our defense against evolving cyber threats. The FIRST Bangalore 2026 Technical Colloquium aims to bring together professionals from across the region to share insights, build connections, and strengthen our collective response to emerging threats. Your unique insights, innovative research, and practical case studies are crucial to advancing the state of incident response and cybersecurity practices across the region.
The program will feature in-depth technical talks, case studies, and practical insights from practitioners working at the forefront of cybersecurity. Whether you are focused on incident response, threat intelligence, vulnerability management, or security operations, this colloquium will provide valuable knowledge and networking with peers.
We seek engaging speakers to present on topics and ideas related to CSIRT and PSIRT, with the goal of strengthening our individual and collective ability to prevent and respond to cybersecurity incidents.
What We Are Looking For…
We are seeking new ideas, actionable insights, innovative research, compelling case studies, and practical experiences that can advance the state of security and incident response practice. Ideas that can be implemented by other teams—without requiring proprietary information or software—are particularly welcome. We hope this list helps you think of work you or your team members can present.
We do not allow presentations with the aim of gaining the audience’s interest in any commercial application, solution, or product. In other words, NO SALES OR MARKETING PRESENTATIONS!
The language of the conference is English.
Suggested Topics
Under the conference theme, “Building Trust through Resilience”
We invite submissions guided by the following broad topics:
- New Attacks – technical, human, supply chain, etc.
- New Defenses – beyond the broken perimeter
- New Targets – security and incident response for mobile, ICS, IoT, cloud, etc.
- Understanding and Detecting Marauders – novel or new techniques, analysis in threat intelligence and detection
- Analyzing Attacks and Intrusions – tools, techniques, analysis, results
- Building Better Products – product security, secure software development
- Defenses in Place – skills, maturity, resilience, awareness, communication, etc.
- Defending Others – national CSIRTs, third-party incidents
- Joining Forces – sharing, collaboration, working with others
- Sharing Stories – case studies
- Playing by the Rules – privacy, ethics, norms, governance, standards & best practices
- Managing SOCs/CSIRTs/PSIRTs – recruiting/training, communicating with executives, etc.
Submissions should propose one of the following formats (note that the Program Committee may contact you to suggest a different format for a talk or session):
- Presentations (30 minutes presentation and 5 minutes for Q&A): conventional presentation to the audiences of up to 100.
- Panels (60-90 minutes, inclusive of Q&A): Must include details of the moderator, suggested duration, and a tentative list of panelists.
Presenters are expected to present in person at the conference.
The Review Process, Tips, and Guidelines
All submissions are reviewed by program committee, composed of experts and practitioners representing a diverse set of teams and organizations. They are responsible for selecting the best and most relevant talks to make up the conference program. FIRST does not require you to submit a formal paper for consideration. However, your submission must at least let the reviewers understand:
- What problem is this addressing?
- How does this help? Who will benefit?
- What makes you uniquely qualified to present on this topic?
You must provide a detailed outline (recommended 300-500 words) and an abstract (no more than 250 words, though we recommend 100-150 words) to explain what the talk is about in a way that makes people interested in hearing it. You are welcome to include additional materials to support any of these points. Submissions must be complete by the closing date (see “Important Dates” below) or they will be rejected.
Submissions must be received by the end of the day on November 10th, 2025 (IST 11:00 PM) via this form. The program committee will be in touch after the submission close date (November 10) to notify accepted speakers.
Speaker Privileges
There is no fee to attend the event. Accepted speakers will be required to complete the online event registration form for badging purposes.
Speakers provide consent for FIRST to record their presentations in audio and/or visual form and grant FIRST a royalty-free license to use, reproduce, and distribute the recordings and accompanying materials. Speakers also understand that while they retain the rights to their presentation materials (handouts, slides, etc.) and the content of the presentation, FIRST is the sole copyright owner of any recording and can distribute the recording, along with any supporting materials in any way, with the appropriate attribution of the speakers. Submitters can indicate an opt-out for recording their presentation.
The FIRST Technical Colloquium conference is open to the public and welcomes non-members, press, and social media coverage. After the conference, presentation materials will be made available on the public area of the FIRST website. If your presentation will be sensitive in nature and will require special handling, you must indicate your TLP level during your CFS submission. Submitters may be asked to explain the reason for the chosen TLP level. TLP definitions can be found at www.first.org/tlp.
Professional photographs, audio, and video will be captured during the Conference. Conference Attendees wearing lanyards indicating their approval to be photographed/recorded, grant FIRST and its representative’s permission to photograph and/or record them during Conference activities and to use such recordings in support of FIRST’s mission. Uses of records may include but are not limited to, electronic broadcasting on FIRST’s YouTube Channel, educational initiatives, post-conference reporting, and FIRST’s social media activities.
Important Dates
- CFS Opens: October 13, 2025
- CFS Submission Deadline: November 10, 2025
- Acceptance Notification Begins: Week of December 8, 2025
Questions for the Program Committee
If you have questions about the conference submission process or need additional information, please contact the Program Committee at bangalore-tc-pc@first.org.
On behalf of the Program Committee, we look forward to bringing the community another compelling program and look forward to seeing everyone in Bangalore Technical Colloquium!
