I attended AtlSecCon 2026 last week, it hit different this year.
The threats are new. The tools are new. Underneath the AI agents, the identity-abuse techniques, the cleverer social engineering, most of it is still more advanced ways to do the same things attackers have always done. Get in. Move laterally. Extract value. Get out.
Keeping up with the new stuff is the job. Being in tech means reading, testing, attending events like this one, staying current on what’s changing and why. But new tooling doesn’t replace the fundamentals, it layers on top of them. Planning before the incident, not during. Training that actually happens regularly. Tabletop exercises that stress-test decision-making, not just the tech. Backups you’ve actually restored from. The phone numbers of the people you’d need to call, already in your phone.
The new stuff is fun to learn about. The boring work is what actually saves you.
Thank you to Travis Barlow and the many organizers and volunteers who pull this event together every year. Over 1,700 attendees this year, up from 45 at the first AtlSecCon in 2011.
AtlSecCon Cybersecurity
AltSecCon 2026
