Recent conversations with fellow members of the cybersecurity community have driven home the fact that we still have a little explaining to do. The conversation usually goes something like this: "I'd love to attend CYBR.SEC.CON someday. I've always enjoyed HOU.SEC.CON."
Thing is, if you've been part of HOU.SEC.CON over the years, you've already been part of the story that led to CYBR.SEC.CON.
The conference experience many people came to know and love as HOU.SEC.CON continues today as CYBR.SEC.CON. Same conference, but with a new name and a national reach.
The nonprofit organization behind HOU.SEC.CON now operates as CYBR.SEC.Careers, carrying forward the same 501(c)(3) mission of supporting and growing the cybersecurity workforce. CYBR.SEC.Community, LLC. proudly manages the operations and programming of CYBR.SEC.Careers and affiliated events through a long-standing event services contract. While we do not own CYBR.SEC.Careers, we are honored to support its growth and success as a trusted management partner. All branding, ownership, and intellectual property for CYBR.SEC.Careers remain with its original creators and rights holders.
When a Local Conference Stops Being Local
HOU.SEC.CON. spent years creating a problem every community conference would love to have. It got too big for its name.
Back in 2023, HOU.SEC.CON. hosted its final event in a hotel. Tickets sold out six weeks before the conference. Additional micro-booths were added for sponsors. Those sold out too.
In 2024, the event moved into a conference center for the first time. Attendance nearly doubled. People came from across the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, and beyond.
At some point, HOU.SEC.CON. creators Michael Farnum, and Sam Van Ryder had to acknowledge what was right in front of them: This wasn't really a Houston conference anymore.
Houston would always be part of the story. It was where everything started. But the community had grown far beyond the city that gave it life.
So in 2025, the team started building a new look and feel that reflected what the event had become rather than where it had started.
The visual inspiration wasn't Silicon Valley. It wasn't cyberpunk. It wasn't another glowing lock icon. VP of Marketing Lauren Andrus leaned into a look-and-feel based on vintage broadcast journalism. Radio. Newspapers. Comic books. The era when technology was fundamentally about connecting people and sharing stories.
That design language has steadily become part of everything we do, from conference experiences and media coverage to the newspapers we introduced at OT.SEC.CON. and CYBR.HAK.CON., and the comic-inspired elements that have begun appearing throughout the broader community experience.
CYBR.SEC.Media as the Showcase
The launch of CYBR.SEC.Media in June 2025 was really the first public signal that something bigger was happening. What started as a conference community was becoming a year-round community.
More about CYBR.SEC.Community:
Michael Farnum
Since then, we've expanded our podcasts, grown the newsletter from bi-weekly to weekly, redesigned the website, added Community Corner, launched CYBR.HAK.CON., continued growing OT.SEC.CON., and started building out CYBR.SEC.Careers. CYBR.SEC.CON is now the flagship event, and CYBR.SEC.Media is where we capture everything that happens there.
Of course, changing the name and making it national is one thing. Getting people to remember it is something else entirely.
We've spent the past year doing our best to make CYBR.SEC.CON hard to miss.
We've put it on websites, newsletters, podcasts, conference stages, banners, stickers, t-shirts, social media posts, and probably a few places I've forgotten.
We've embraced one of the questions we hear most often: "Wait, did you forget the E?" Nope. It's part of the fun.
It's sparked conversations at conferences. It's shown up on stickers and shirts. It's generated more than a few double takes from people encountering the brand for the first time.
National movements aren't built through logos and taglines alone. They're built through shared experiences, inside jokes, recognizable symbols, and the little things that make people feel like they're part of something.
If a sticker about a missing vowel helps start that conversation, we're here for it.
