It has already been three months since the successful Copenhagen FIRSTCON25 took place. If you want to get access to over 40 of the TLP-CLEAR presentations, they are available online. For those who attended, I hope you pinged back to those you met, and that you already knew before. Since FIRSTCON22, I noticed an increase in the number of attendees that were "Happy to be there" - as in the tag I boast almost every year.
If you met new faces, especially if they were newbies, please check whether they are on our Slack workspace, and if not, please help them to join. The wider our community, the better.
In September, I was invited to give a talk on digital sovereignty, which is a hot topic these days, given that an increasing number of states seem to depend on a handful of hyperscalers from just two countries. Most solutions range from the fairly naive 'Just use Linux' to the probably overly ambitious 'Let's build our own hyperscalers'. I won't comment on the former, but I will add that building a hyperscaler is not a trivial undertaking. However, one thing that is constantly forgotten is that great technology doesn't develop in isolation. Silicon Valley is called that for a reason, not Silicon Island.
FIRST is adding a new feature to our quarterly newsletter called the Member Spotlight. This will be a recurring article that will recognize member contributions to the FIRST community including:
A new direction for sponsorship was announced at the 37th Annual FIRST conference in Denmark. FIRST CORE provides critical funding to expand FIRST’s Community and Capacity Building Program (CCB), which focuses on developing incident response capabilities in regions where resources are limited.
CORE’s goals are to foster community; improve operational capacity across the globe, build resilience across the digital ecosystem, and empower incident responders and their teams.
General Update The annual conference is always an important milestone for the Special Interest Groups, as they usually present on what they have done over the past year and many also enjoy getting the chance to meet in person. For those of you who have missed the SIG Updates, you can find the slides on the conference website.
FIRST continues to provide training on different cyber security topics and in different parts of the world through our Community Trainers and CCB program. From June onwards, FIRST has conducted the following training, supported by the trainers in the FIRST community. We highly appreciate the contribution by the trainers.
Growth Stack Media secured 41 pieces of earned media coverage for FIRST in Q3FY25 across notable publications including Cybernews, Cyber Defense Wire, and SecurityBrief. You can view the full CoverageBook of articles here.
October 27-29, 2025
Mexico City (MX)
#FIRSTMX2025
October 30-31, 2025
09:30-14:00 EDT | 14:30-19:00 CET
Online
Hosted by UNDP and UNICC
Call for Speakers is Open!
December 2–5, 2025
Mauritius
December 9–10, 2025
Ljubljana (SI)
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February 9-10, 2026
Paris (FR)
More details coming soon!
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February 10-11, 2026
Bangalore (IN)
#BANGALORETC26
February 26-27, 2026
Tashkent (UZ)
Co-hosted by UZCERT
Early Registration Available!
April 13-16, 2026
Scottsdale (USA)
#VULNCON26
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April 21-23, 2026
Munich (DE)
#FIRSTCTI26
Early Registration Available!
June 14-19, 2026
Denver (US)
#FIRSTCON26