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BSides Ballarat conference

Join the cybersecurity community in regional Victoria, with practical talks, hands-on challenges and real conversations with people working in the field.

View the 2026 program

Attend the 2027 conference

BSides Ballarat was held at the Emerging Technologies Hub on our SMB Campus on 28 February and 1 March 2026. We’ll be back in 2027, with more details coming soon.

BSides Ballarat is an annual conference that brings the cybersecurity community together in regional Victoria. It’s focused on building local skills, sharing knowledge and creating connections. Cybersecurity is a fascinating and rapidly expanding field, spanning enthusiasts, commercial security and national security. While many conferences are held in capital cities, regional communities often miss out. BSides Ballarat helps close that gap.

This conference is designed for those new to cybersecurity, including students, early-career professionals and anyone exploring the industry. You’ll learn how security works in practice, hear from people working in the field, and take part in hands-on challenges and interactive sessions.

Since launching in 2025, more than 150 students, professionals and experts have attended this sell-out event, including speakers from organisations such as Microsoft, IBM, CrowdStrike, Telstra, the Australian Federal Police and NBN.

Past speakers

Keynote speakers

  • Ben Wilkinson (eManaged), Cyber attack recovery: Leading through crisis
  • Darren Arnott (Cyber Informed), L'affaiire du telegraphe: The bordeaux hackers of 1834

Speakers

  • Christian Azuero (BMM), Hacker escape room: A capture the flag and escape room experience
  • Daniel Cross (Tilt Renewables), An introduction to critical infrastructure security
  • David  Mulraney (The Repair Group), When legitimate Google Ads go rogue
  • George Doucas (MACS), nexTeach: Leveraging AI for distributed teaching
  • George Ferres (DUCA), Building a home lab on a student budget
  • Gyle dela Cruz, Spilled tea: How your favorite mobile apps might be serving up your data
  • Hirusha Adikari (DUCA), Your PC has a virus (It doesn't)
  • Jedd Parrot (Monash University), Insights from the Australian Higher Education and Research sector threat report
  • Kenneth Yu (Cyberknowledge), Beneath the surface: Exploring the dark web and it's cybersecurity implications
  • Lyall Collins, An introduction to roles in cybersecurity
  • Matt Ustinov and Ken Tan (Australian Federal Police), How to preserve evidence, and report cyber crime
  • Nabil Siddiqui (Microsoft), Unpacking the illusion: Understanding package hallucinations in LLMs
  • Neel Paranjape (Monash University), Guarding the gateway: API security essentials
  • Paramvir Singh (RISC), Zero click, zero chance: How one attack changed mobile security forever
  • Peter Coroneos (Cybermindz), Maintaining mental health in cybersecurity
  • Peter Lake (Starmaster space education), Introduction to cybersecurity for space
  • Purvi Mehta (Internet Commerce Security Laboratory), Building an AI powered cyber training range
  • Rue Maharaj (Melbourne Water), Insider threats: Stopping the wolves in corporate clothing
  • Ryan Fox (DUCA), Bingo, breaches and breadcrumbs: An OSINT game for everyone
  • Slavo Greminger (Independent security consultant), How to dissect an octopus
  • Tim Haintz (Microsoft), Fun with agenetic AI

Exploit lounge speakers

  • Abhay Vaish (Palo Alto Networks)
  • Aditya Patil (Telstra)     
  • Paul Black (Internet Commerce Security Laboratory), An introduction to ROP exploits
  • Sean Park (Trend Micro)
  • Tarek Challan (Internet Commerce Security Laboratory)

Keynote speakers

  • Nick Bruyn (eManaged), Small Business, easier target: Implementing essential 8 for smaller organisations

Speakers

  • Adib Surani (Scarlet Study), How we hacked and translated the great ace attorney
  • Aditya Patil (Telstra), Detecting scattered spider: Through the lens of mitre attack
  • Anurag Khanna (Crowdstrike), How attackers keep outsmarting defenders: Wisdom from the trenches
  • Chuanshu Jiang (Shea Security), Unravelling the web: An introduction for penetration testing
  • Daniel Rodriguez (Australian Federal Police), Cybercrime investigation 101
  • David Mulraney (The Repair Group), How To build your own tech startup
  • Erica Muir (IBM), An introduction to fraud investigation
  • Gyle dela Cruz, Personal cyber defence in the age of oversharing
  • Kanik Sachdeva (Medibank), Your identity is under attack: How to fight back and win
  • Martijn van Praag (Microsoft), Automating CTI extraction
  • Matt Tett (Enex TestLab), Everything you wanted to know about IoT, but were afraid to ask
  • Narain Singh (Telstra), Cyber supply chain risk
  • Paul Watters (Cyberstronomy), How To build a high-performing cybersecurity team
  • Richard Grainger (Triskele Labs), Behind the breach: Exploring digital forensics and incident response
  • Rue Maharaj (Melbourne Water), Hacking in to your cyber career: From start to specialist (and management)
  • Sanam Makadia (Datacom), An introduction to critical infrastructure attacks
  • Simon L (Microsoft), Introduction to K7C: The cyberdetective game
  • Tim Haintz (Microsoft), How to land your dream job
With many prestigious conferences held in capital cities, it is especially exciting to build the cybersecurity community in Ballarat."
— Paul Black, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Internet Commerce Security Laboratory

Organising committee

Our organising committee brings together security researchers and engineers from both academia and industry.

Partnerships

Thank you to our sponsors without which the BSides Ballarat conference would not be possible.

Interested in sponsoring the conference? Email p.black@federation.edu.au.

Our sponsors