Lockdowns, an escape room, and a full house: BSides Brisbane 2020

If you were organising events in 2020, you’ll remember the drill: dates moving, rules changing, and that low-level hum of “will this actually happen?” We’re still proud we got BSides Brisbane 2020 over the line: 335 tickets sold, and a room full of people who showed up ready to make the most of it.

What stuck with us afterwards wasn’t just the programme (though the speakers went hard). It was the good faith everyone brought. Sponsors who stayed in when they could have walked, attendees who rolled with last-minute changes, and a volunteer crew running on caffeine and stubborn optimism.

Here’s the 2020 booklet if you want the original schedule in your hands.

Cyber Escape Room: Critical Mass

One thing we’re still grinning about is Critical Mass, an escape-room experience backed by CyberCX and Living Security. We wanted something that wasn’t “death by PowerPoint” for security awareness: social engineering, sensitive data, phishing, physical access ideas, the messy stuff that actually shows up in real incidents.

Presenters

Thank you to every speaker who made the day what it was.

Presenter	Title
Brian Hay	Collaboration - The secret of criminal success
Bhojraj Parmar	The importance of threat modeling in ICS
Luke Pearson	Quick wins or great losses; Preventing and preparing for incident response
John Powell	The gap in Australia's defence
Bruce Large	From the vest to the flak jacket: How cyber security architecture and architects need to support secops
Kylie McDevitt	Researching critical infrastructure security
Cole Cornford	Scaled security from scratch for a global startup
Michael Skelton	Bug Bounties - What really makes a successful hunter?
Patrick Dwyer	WTF is running on your network?
Warren & Tashi	BGP hijacking and secure internet routing

Sponsors

These organisations helped us keep the lights on for BSides Brisbane 2020. We’re grateful.

Snaps from the day

A few favourites from the floor. There are more in the folder if we expand this post later.