Organizers of a series of workshops and training sessions canceled by the sudden arrival of Hurricane Helene have regrouped for 2025.
BsidesAugusta 2025 is set for Oct. 20 through Oct. 25. It will follow the outline planned for the 2024 event that was canceled.
“It’ll be four days of training classes that we’ll offer, and that’ll be the 20th through the 23rd and then the Security Onion conference on October 24,” BSidesAugusta organizer, and COO of Security Onion Solutions, LLC, Phil Plantamura explained for ABD. “Both of those events, the training and Security Onion conference, will take place at Georgia Cyber Center. Then on October 25, which is a Saturday, BSidesAugusta will be at the Harrison Commons at MCG.”
Augusta is one of more than 100 cities worldwide that hosts a BSides conference. Plantamura said the Augusta conference is the largest in the southeast with a number of speakers and attendees coming from out of town.
Plantamura said sponsors are ready for the 2025 event.
“Most sponsors held on and just let their sponsorships roll over into the next year. We did have a couple of sponsors just pull back and say, ‘You know, we’ll take the funds back for 2024 and then we’ll recommit back in 2025’, but we’re fairly certain those sponsors will return.”
BSidesAugusta was partnering with HACK Augusta and theClubhou.se for some events in the Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center. Plantamura said they are still working out details for this year.
BSidesAugusta is an outgrowth of the DEF CON and Black Hat conferences in Las Vegas. Plantamura compared those to the “A” side of a vinyl record. BSidesAugusta represents the other side of the record, giving a platform for sharing information closer to home.
Plantamura said BsidesAugusta attracts some of the top information security practitioners, including chief information security officers from various large organizations and company founders that come.
Some of BSidesAugusta had to be canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic but came back strongly the following year.
Destination Augusta had estimated the full week of activities this year, originally set for Sept. 30 through Oct. 5, would attract more than 1,000 attendees with an economic impact of more than $500,000.
Plantamura said he thinks attendees, sponsors, and speakers attend each year because BsidesAugusta provides quality information in a welcoming community.
“I think it’s the community here that they’re very interested in talking to and meeting and being a part of,” he said. BsidesAugusta has a very special place in a lot of, if you will, hearts of these sponsors that we have, and many come back year after year. So, the technical depth and expertise of the folks that they run into is a very specialized audience that most of these sponsors are looking to have conversations with. And BSidesAugusta provides that for them.”
He said anyone with questions or needing additional information can visit the website: https://bsidesaugusta.org/
