By order of the Peaky Blinders, Bsides Birmingham has officially arrived, and arrive it did yesterday with an absolute bang!
Living in Worcester I find that the Midlands often gets overlooked when it comes to cyber events which I find incredible considering that Qinetiq and IASME are based in Malvern. There is also a raft of smaller cyber organisations in the area that was dubbed “Cyber Valley” back when I first got into the industry in 2009, we also have a very active British Computing Society Herefordshire and Worcestershire Chapter that meets up monthly at The Hive and we have the Worcester DEFCON group run by Jess Burden that also meets up monthly. Malvern is home to the Midlands Cyber Cluster (which was formerly the Malvern Cyber Cluster and the first cyber cluster to launch in the UK back in 2009 when I first transitioned into the cyber security industry). In Herefordshire there is Skylon Park, home to the Hereford Cyber Quarter and Midlands Centre for Cyber Security.
In addition to all that, the University of Worcester has its own cyber lab and not only offers a Cyber Security Undergraduate degree, it also offers a post-graduate MSc and…..drum roll….they are also now offering an undergraduate degree and post-graduate MSc in Artificial Intelligence. The Midlands really is the best kept secret when it comes to cyber security!
So why Bsides Birmingham?
In 2024 the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) brought their flagship event CyberUK to Birmingham, and as a result some brilliant fringe events took place in the city when CyberUK was on. Conversations started along the lines of, “wouldn’t it be great if there was a Bsides event in the Midlands?”, and it turned out that a few of us in the Midlands including Christian Toon, Marc Avery, Luke Jowett, Natasha Harley and Ryan Protheroe were thinking the exact same thing. And so, the idea of Bsides Birmingham was born.
I had the absolute pleasure of joining the organising group from the very start when the idea of Bsides Birmingham started to become a reality, but sadly I couldn’t help with the organisation of it as much as I would have liked (being made redundant from my role at Qualitest, having the flu which took me out of action for nearly 2 months and taking on the role of Associate Lecturer at the University of Worcester were the factors for this). I wasn’t even sure if I could make it due to a constant juggling of priorities, but as I had to cancel a planned trip to London for Big SASIG and the Cyber OSPA’s, it meant I could make it after all. And I am SO very glad that I did.
I believe that there is an over saturation of cyber security related events today, many of them with a strong commercial slant to them where you get constantly harassed by determined salespeople selling their solutions and offerings from their stands. It isn’t their fault per se, if I had spent thousands on an exhibition stand, I would want to ensure that I get the most ROI out of it as possible. You could go to something every week and weekend if you wanted to, and the constant juggling of which events are the best to be at, as well as a constant feeling of FOMO, is something that plays on my mind a lot. If I can’t get to something I always feel like I’m missing out and not learning anything new.
So what is the answer to this plethora of cyber events? To me it is two-fold; there needs to be more niche events that focus on a particular industry or area, for example, Jamieson Nesbitt runs some railway cyber security related events, and there need to be more community events such as Bsides.
The launch of Bsides Birmingham – team work makes the dream work!
I’ve been to a few Bsides events including Cheltenham, Bristol and London and I’ve loved them all. I love the community feel of them, I love that it is an amazing opportunity to see and network with many of my friends and contacts in the cyber security industry, I love that there is no hard “sell” from salespeople on exhibition stands and I love that I can learn so much to keep my skills updated in terms of the talks on the different tracks. For me, this is definitely the way to go with events, and Bsides Birmingham achieved all that and more.
For the day itself I said I would be happy to volunteer and muck in if anything needed doing, and I confess I only managed to attend just two of the talks – “Thriving in an “Always On” World: Managing Stress & Building Resilience” by Candice Pearce and “The Rise of LLMs: Unveiling Cyber Threats and Staying Ahead of the Curve” by Dr. Manimuthu Arunmozhi. I enjoyed both talks massively, especially the latter due to my being commissioned by Kogan Page Publishers to write a book on AI and cyber security that I’m currently working on. I was gutted that I missed “From model to cyber security (and everything in between!)” by Lisa Diaz in the Rookie Track, and Phat Hobbit AKA Ian Thornton-Trump’s talk “It’s going to be better for you!” I’m so very sorry both, but I’ll come on to why I missed them shortly. If you would like a more detailed overview of some of the talks that took place, Dan Raywood has put together a superb article on his blog Everyone Loves Raywood.
I could NOT believe how quickly the day went for me, how well organised it was and how hard the team worked on it, I was in awe of everyone involved all day. Despite it taking place on a UK Bank Holiday weekend it was packed with delegates who all seemed to be really enjoying themselves, which goes to show that if you put on an event that has great content, and a community feel, people will come to it regardless of when it takes place. My biggest regret is that I couldn’t see or catch up with everyone I wanted to, and I was SO sorry to miss Lisa Diaz’s talk in the rookie track as I hoped I could support her giving her very first talk ever. This is another thing I love about Bsides, the fact they have a rookie speaker track that provides opportunities for first time speakers to get onstage. We need new speakers and new talent in cyber security, and this is an amazing way for people to get some experience of public speaking with a mentor to help them develop their speaking skills.
So why I did I miss many of the talks, and why did I miss catching up with some familiar faces there yesterday? Well, it was because thanks to Bsides Birmingham I made a new friend who I met in person there for the first time yesterday. There were several talks that we planned to go to, but the time we spent chatting away went by SO quickly we completely lost all track of time and missed them! The next thing I know it was time for me to leave to get my train home, the day flew by and I was gutted when it came to an end. Take a bow Olga Zilberberg, I could have spent hours and hours talking to you and I know that this is a firm friendship made because of Bsides Birmingham.
Final thoughts
To sum up, my HUGE thanks go to every member of the organising team and the volunteers who all worked SO hard to make Bsides Birmingham a reality. It was a resounding success, and an event that put cyber security firmly on the Midlands map. I very much hope there will be a second one and that it will be a firm fixture on the Bsides event list, and next year I’ll encourage my students at the University of Worcester to attend, submit CFP’s for the rookie track and to volunteer to gain experience for their CV’s, it will be so valuable for them.
And for next year I will make it an absolute priority to help much more than I could this year, and get myself a Peaky Blinder’s cap to wear especially for the occasion.
