Cyber Thursday: Security Playground Live

SAINTCON 2026 CFP Abstract

The last Thursday of each month, engineers, architects, defenders, customers, and curious technologists gather in our office for a simple reason: to learn by doing.

Cyber Thursday is not a webinar. It is not a sales presentation. It is not a slide deck disguised as marketing.

It is a recurring community event where participants get hands-on with real security technologies through guided labs, capture-the-flag exercises, live demonstrations, collaborative research, architecture reviews, and open discussion. Topics change monthly based on industry trends, emerging threats, and whatever happens to capture the attention of a room full of security professionals.

For SAINTCON, we are bringing Cyber Thursday to the main stage.

Rather than presenting a single technology or product, this session will showcase the format, energy, successes, failures, and lessons learned from building a hands-on security community series. Attendees will experience a live version of the activities that have become staples of our monthly events, including technology challenges, problem-solving exercises, interactive demonstrations, and audience participation.

Past Cyber Thursday sessions have included:

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) capture-the-flag challenges

Zero Trust and SASE platform exercises

Network Detection and Response (NDR) investigations

SSL certificate automation workshops

Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) hands-on labs

Threat hunting and security operations demonstrations

Industry roundtable discussions and architecture reviews

The goal is not to teach attendees how to click through a product interface, sit through a vendor talk and get another hat, or wonder when lunch is going to be served. The goal is to demonstrate how meaningful learning happens when experienced practitioners are given a problem to solve, the tools to explore, and the freedom to experiment.

Whether you're building security training for your organization, looking for new ways to engage engineers, or simply interested in how a community-driven security program operates, this session offers a practical look at turning security education into an experience people actually want to attend.

Join us as we transform a SAINTCON presentation slot into a live Cyber Thursday event and show why hands-on learning continues to outperform passive instruction in today's security landscape.