CypherCon is Wisconsin’s premier technology and hacker conference, bringing together cybersecurity professionals, tech enthusiasts, and innovators to share knowledge and explore cutting-edge ideas. With engaging keynotes, interactive workshops, and creative challenges, it fosters a collaborative and vibrant community.
CYPHERCON
Wisconsin’s largest technology conference
Technology, AI, Security, Hacking – and everything in between
Wisconsin’s largest technology conference
2026 Keynotes

KEYNOTE: Echoes from the Net: Floppy Memories, Digital Fingerprints
Mishaal Khan

KEYNOTE: Cybersecurity lessons learned from working at an Alaskan ISP in the 90s
Bruce Potter
What
Wisconsin’s largest technology conference, an event with over 125 technology, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and privacy presentations.
Presentations

Capture the Flag 101
Micah Silverman

Beyond TLS: Zero-Trust Payload Encryption for Multi-Cloud APIs
Ronak Patel

IAM? OMG! Avoiding Common Pitfalls in Identity and Access Management.
Rebecca Jones

Filtering the Noise: Crafting an Actionable Threat Feed from Community-Shared Intelligence
JJ Josing

This Little Brite of Mine: Mobile Forensics for Fun and (Sometimes) Profit
Kaden Payne

Cheese, Code, and Cybercrime: Wisconsin’s Role in Hacker History
Kyle Hinterberg

Seeing Is Deceiving: Deepfakes, Creative Power, and the New Trust Crisis
Kyle Hinterberg

Choosing Where to Hit: How Defenders Can Shape Adversary Behavior
Greg Conti & Tom Cross

Strengthen cyber resilience for Entra ID and Microsoft 365
Vanessa Toves

Securing the Perimeter: Credential Security Fundamentals
Shelby Palmersheim

The Pre-Internet Computer: Hacking a System Older Than the Web
Adam Toscher

AI-Powered GRC: Leveraging Machine Learning for Risk Prediction and Compliance Automation
Kartik Khurana & Pranay Suri

Shall We Play a Game? Breaking Weak Ciphers and Exploring AI-Generated Text
Jamie Grunewald

RAGe Against the Machine: AI-Powered Compliance and Cybersecurity
Brennan Lodge

Tales From the Crypt…Analyst: The After Life
Jeff Man

Simple Steps for Security Teams to Stay on the Right Side of the Law
Zach Willenbrink

“You Keep Using That Word… I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means: A Survey of CTI Terms”
April Lenhard

Some Hot Dicom Polyglot Action
Danny Hetzel

The Importance of Being in Third Place
Robert Wagner

CTI Bingo: RMM Abuse, Supply Chains, and EDR Killers
Sam Mayers

Evolving PCI: Turning Compliance Into Continuous Defense
Kyle Hinterberg

Ctrl + Alt + Lead: Rebooting Cyber Culture with Human Skills
Amanda Kollmorgan

Password Cracking Methodologies
Dustin Heywood / EvilMog

Stealing From Thieves
Nicholas Anastasi & Juan Pablo Gomez Postigo

Invisible Gateways: How Threat Actors Exploit IoT to Breach Organizations
Phillip Wylie

N8N: The Automation Powerhouse – Building Production-Ready AI Agents Without the Code Complexity
Sri Hari Deep Kolagani

From Concert Hall to Code Review, Symphony to Software
Sarah Peters

The Cold War Goes Online
Kayne Whitney

Cyber $ & Uncommon Sense! WI CRT Cyber Fire Fighters
Troy Stairwalt

Don’t waste your time (in this talk)
Jeremy Bauer

4 Steps, Repeat: threat modeling is a dance
Sean Juroviesky

Hack The Hacker (aka I’ve Been Pwned)
Jose Martinez

Spiders, Deepfakes, and Access Credentials
Tom Cross

I Stole Your Azure Tenant With a Login Link
Eric Boyd

Getting Catfished by AI: Why Your CEO Might Not Be Who You Think They Are
James McQuiggan

IIoT: The “S” Still Stands for Security
Lance Lamont

A Series of Unfortunate Event (Listeners)
Ryan Bonner

Choose Your Own Adventure: The Interactive Talk on Tabletop Exercises
Josh Harr

Empowering patients use to artificial intelligence
Lisa Tee

Make Your Point: Crafting Compelling Cyber Narratives
Joe Nay

Hardware Implant Revolution II: Development of Hardware Implants for Red Team Operations
Victor Fernandez Minguillon

The Internet Is Fun Again and We Are Repeating All the Same Mistakes
Ryan Zagrodnik

Title From Prompt to Payload: Defending Al-Driven Tools in Adversarial Setting
Shubham Mishra & Rajeev Ranjan Diwakar

The Falacy of a Safe Encryption Backdoor
Bill Bernard

Quantum Ready – A Framework for Enterprise Post Quantum Readiness
Walt Powell

The Personal Branding Patch You Didn’t Know You Needed
Terra L. Fletcher

Beyond the Firewall: Responding to Cyber Incidents in Industrial Control Systems
Chriss Hansen

Ransomware vs. Info Stealers: A Comparative Analysis
Steph Shample

Boardroom Battles: Successful Cyber Risk reporting
Ian Curtis

Chasing Shapeshifters: Investigating AI-Generated Polymorphic Malware
Stephen Sam

Closing Keynote: Nostalgia is a Sickness. How to Get Well Soon and Recover Internet Optimism
Daly Barnett

Detection to Decision: Agentic AI at the Edge for Security Operations
John Platais

WarGames for Defenders: Playing Threats with MITRE ATT&CK Navigator
Thomas Freeman

Hack the Human: Sales Psychology for Cyberpreneurs
Chad Coe

Cyber Tabletop Exercises: Choose your Adventure
Omar A. Rivera Merced

What happens if you handed Them the Keys: Moving from Assumed Breach to Assumed Insider
Will Bonk

Offense for Defense
Tim Medin

From Basement Hackers to AI Criminals: What the Old Internet Created
Mike Wright

Red Team on a Budget
Jacob Peacy

Open Source House Party
Kadi McKean

Inside M(AI)ware: Behavior, Analysis, and Detection
Dr. Fatou Sankare

The Importance of Networking in the Cybersecurity Community
Michael Lenz

WTF is going on with CVE?
Josh Bressers

The Hardware Procurement Iceberg: A Framework For Keeping Embedded Research Fun, Cheap, and Ethical
Yltsi SecResearch

The Swiss cheese of SaaS identity security
Eric Woodruff

The Price of a Life Online: Valuing Personally Identifiable Information on the Dark Web
Andréanne Bergeron

The Quantum Shift: Assessing PQC on Your Network
Anita Nikolich

From Weak Keys to AI Agents: How Machine Identity Became the New (Yet Old) Attack Surface
Brice Williams
TBA
TBA

Advanced Personal Privacy
Speaker Name (Withheld for Privacy)

Your AI is Social Engineering You
J Wolfgang Goerlich

Privacy in design (PbD) in DevSecOps
Anitha Dakamarri

Red Team Lessons from Copilot Deployments
Christian Stegh

What the Scope? Sh** my Consultant | Client Says
Qasim Ijaz

FIPS-140 Level 3 encryption is just an API call away
Marko Sluga

Bypassing BitLocker: Full Disk Decryption for less than $5
Allen & Dale Cook

Inside the Mind of a Game Hacker
Eric Boyd & Son

Tales from the Inside: An Incident Response Weekend
Sahan Fernando

How To Deal Drugs
Connor N/A

So, You Want to be a Forensicator…
Catherine Ullman

“DLP: Didn’t Live uP” “Legacy DLP fell short but DSPM can help it live up to its promise
Ward Balcerzak

How the Vietnam War created single sign-on – and how it’s evolved since
Connor Peshek

Cybersecurity’s new villain – Deep Fakes
Sankalp Kumar

The End of Click Rates: A New Era for Cybersecurity Awareness
Jake Wesenberg

Panel: Access Through Mentors: The Leadership Pipeline Strategy
Lorena Mejia, George Wang, Angelika Szymanowska, Alisha Outridge

Cybersecurity is Ready for Local Models
Michael Roytman

Privacy & Compliance Challenges with AI: Safeguarding Data in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Noor Bains

Protecting Main Street from Malware: A Cyber Briefing for busy leaders
Karen Arthur

Meschcore & Meshtastic Command & Control Infrastructure
Eric Escobar

Papa! Mama! Watch me campaign in the cloud!
Anna Akselevich & Yaniv Miron

OPSEC For Liberation Movements: Field Notes from 2025
Daly Barnett

What Attackers Automate First (And Why You Should Care)
Jeremiah Salzberg

Netscape, Dial-Up, and Data Breaches: Browser Risk Then vs Now
Jesse Durkee
Workshops

Certified Vibe Hacker
$150

Level UP OSINT
$725

Binary Jiu-Jitsu: White Belt Fundamentals
$50
April 1-2, 2026
The space for
hobbyists hackers technologists hackers leaders enthusiasts nerds hackers leaders
Venue Info
Baird Center
400 W Wisconsin Ave
Milwaukee, WI 53203
2026 InfoSec Spring Break
March 30/31 – Mon & Tues: Training
April 1/2 – Wed & Thurs: CypherCon
April 3 – Friday: BSidesMKE
Milwaukee, WI