Olivier Caleff is the newly appointed Chair of the FIRST Board of Directors. He recaps the Annual General Meeting and thanks outgoing Chair, Tracy Bills, for her dedication and leadership. Olivier strongly encourages everyone to identify ways they can engage in FIRST’s activities, such as the SIGs (Special Interest Groups), programs, tools, and the many other FIRST events throughout the year.
"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." This quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson embodies the qualities of Richard D. Pethia, avid fisherman and founding director of the CERT® Coordination Center (CERT/CC), now part of the CERT Division of the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (CMU SEI).
After many years of dedicated work in building and sustaining the LAC-CSIRTs community—enhancing incident response capabilities, supporting the creation of new CSIRTs, and advancing capacity building across the LAC region through initiatives such as the FIRST Symposium and other security conferences—I decided to run for the FIRST Board of Directors. I’d like to thank everyone for their support and am looking forward to contributing as the newest FIRST Board member.
The motto of this year's annual conference was "Fortresses of the Future: Building Bridges not Walls." We continually emphasize that successful incident response depends on CSIRT collaboration. When I attend meetings at the UN, OSCE, and similar organizations, participants consistently insist that CSIRTs work together and exchange information. I certainly remember a time when I could freely exchange information with peers worldwide.
Another FIRST conference has come and gone, so let’s take a moment to relive it together! Held in beautiful Copenhagen, Denmark, FIRSTCON25: Fortresses of the Future – Building Bridges, Not Walls gathered 1056 security professionals from 103 nations for six days of insight, inspiration, and infectious energy.
With 523 FIRST team members onsite—including 34 liaison members and over 300 member organizations—the global incident response community was out in full force. Even more exciting: over half the attendees were first-time FIRST participants!
The FIRST Board of Directors plays a key role in the governance and strategic direction of the organization. Its members are responsible for ensuring that FIRST fulfills its mission and institutional objectives while maintaining an effective operational structure aligned with the needs of its global community.
All Board members share a set of common responsibilities. These include actively participating in the definition, review, and evaluation of the organization’s strategic goals, as well as overseeing the budget and resource allocation. Board members are also expected to serve as liaisons to the membership community, support regional initiatives, participate in conferences and technical groups, and represent FIRST in external engagements.
With the confirmation of the new Board for the 2025–2026 term, new roles and responsibilities have also been assigned and published at the following link.
What a quarter of new additions we have had! We want to share an enormous warm welcome to our new team members, and as always a thank you to our sponsoring teams. During the AGM, we were able to share some cool updates about our membership to date: FIRST now has 808 full members, 192 Liaisons and 2 associate members!
During the final substantive session of Open-ended working group on security of and in the use of information and communications Technologies (OEWG) in July 2025, I had the honor of leading a stimulating workshop at the Women and International Security in Cyberspace Fellowship at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.
'"Cyber Incident Simulation Through a Public Policy Lens': Can You Piece Together the Attack?
Growth Stack Media secured 74 pieces of earned media coverage for FIRST in Q2FY25 across notable publications including CSO Online, Infosecurity Magazine, SC Magazine, and TechTarget. You can view the full CoverageBook of articles here.
September 9-11, 2025
Da Nang (VN)
September 25-26, 2025
Cambridge United Kingdom (GB)
#VULN4CAST25
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September 30 – October 2, 2025
Mauritius
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October 8-9, 2025
San Salvador (SV)
Co-located with LACNIC / LACNOG 2025
October 7-9, 2025
Oslo (NO)
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December 9–10, 2025
Ljubljana (SI)