Security BSides

So people in Victoria may be happy to know a local group made up of people working in online safety will come together later this week to talk about ongoing and emerging threats.

It's all part of the Bsides cybersecurity conference that happens at the Victoria Conference Center on Friday.

It's hosted by the Vancouver Island Security Research Society, and our next guest will be there as a founding member and organizer with the society.

Ryan Smith is also senior security researcher.

Hey, everyone.

Welcome to the Speaker Spotlight Compilation for BSides Vancouver Island 2026.

Over the past few months, we've had the opportunity to speak to many incredible people that will be joining us on Friday, September 25th at the Victoria Conference Center.

These conversations have offered us just a glimpse of the research, ideas, and real-world experience coming to this year's conference.

BSides is about more than just the talks.

It's about bringing together a community, experienced practitioners, researchers, students, builders, and people who are simply curious and ready to learn.

This grassroots, volunteer-driven conference happens because of the people behind it.

Thank you to our speakers, volunteers, organizing team, attendees, and especially the sponsors for helping make BSides Vancouver Island possible.

Derek Welsky did a super chat in here, didn't he? I think I saw it.

Derek Welsky, 26 months squad member alpha, messaging, volunteering at New Year's- New York BSides with Ginger Hacker.

Hope to see Simply Cyber friends.

[whoo] If you are going to be at BSides, uh, in New York, shout out, go look for Derek Welsky.

Uh, use the #con-chat channel in Discord to coordinate with each other.

Um, hold on.

People...

Like, if you go to Black Hat or even DEF CON, right? Those are fairly large conferences for, compared to, like, some of the smaller, like, BSides type stuff that you probably may have gone to as a security practitioner.

But if you go to AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas, it's, like, five miles of hotels of content.

Um, like MGM Grand all the way up to Caesars Forum, um, with every hotel having different content.