Some events you attend. Some events you build.

BSides Belgrade 2026 was the latter for us. On March 28th, the Faculty of Organizational Sciences in Belgrade hosted Serbia's very first Security BSides conference and We Secure was proud to be a supporting sponsor and part of the core organizing team that made it happen.

This is our recap. But more than that, it's an explanation of why we put our name and our time behind this event.

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Why We Got Behind BSides

We've been to a lot of cybersecurity conferences. We know what most of them look like: polished keynotes with vendor logos on every slide, expensive tickets, and talks that are really just product demos with a story around them.

BSides is the opposite of that.

Security BSides is a global, independent series of community events, created by practitioners, for practitioners. No corporate agenda. No pay-to-speak. No fluff. Every talk gets selected on merit, every attendee gets in for free, and every conversation in the hallway is worth as much as anything on stage.

When the opportunity came to bring that to Belgrade for the first time, we didn't think twice. Serbia has a strong, talented cybersecurity community. What it needed was a neutral, open stage to show itself, and to connect with the global scene. We wanted to help build that.

At We Secure, we believe knowledge shared freely makes everyone more secure. BSides Belgrade is that belief in action.

What the Day Looked Like

The conference ran from 9am to 7pm - 11 talks, 2 hands-on workshops, and a Capture the Flag competition running throughout the entire day. All of it completely free to attend.

The opening keynote was delivered by Xavier Mertens, who traced the full evolution of Command & Control (C2) infrastructure from the earliest malware beacons to where the threat landscape is heading next. It set a serious, technically grounded tone for everything that followed.

The rest of the talks covered the full breadth of modern security:

• Vlatko Košturjak – DNS/BIND exploitation
• Borja Merino – Advanced malware detection engineering‍
• Bojan Alikavazović - GIS on Steroids: Answering "Where?" in Modern Investigation
• ‍Artem Artemov – Forensic investigation ("When the Timeline Lies")‍‍
• Marina Bochenkova – Nightmare on NTLM Street: Legacy's Revenge‍
• Vladan N - Car hacking for intermediate beginners‍
• Tara Gould - Manufactured Trust‍
• Nicolás Villalobos Ramírez – Defending against AWS data exfiltration‍
• Igor Kaplun – AI-powered darknet intelligence‍
• Miloš Skalušević – BYOVD and EDR evasion

Speakers came from across Europe and beyond, bringing real research and hard-won experience to the stage. No slides selling products. No corporate talking points. Just people who know their craft, sharing what they've learned.

‍Hands-On Workshops

Two deep-dive workshops ran alongside the main talks, each two hours long, each built for people who learn by doing.

Anna Mikhaylova led a session on CTI Automation, walking participants through how to turn raw threat intelligence into automated defensive pipelines, the kind of practical workflow that cuts analyst fatigue and speeds up response time in real environments.

Boris Martynyuk ran the afternoon workshop using MITRE ATT&CK to assess real APT group attack patterns, a session designed to sharpen situational awareness for both red and blue teamers.

These weren't intro-level overviews. They were the kind of hands-on sessions you'd normally pay a lot of money for, made freely available to anyone in the room.‍

The Capture The Flag Competition

Running in parallel all day was the BSides Belgrade Capture the Flag competition, 30 challenges across 5 categories: Cryptography, Forensics, Reverse Engineering, Web, and Binary Exploitation. Hosted on the SkillBit platform, open to teams of up to 4, designed for both offensive and defensive thinkers.

Winners were announced live on stage at the closing ceremony.

Our Part in It

We want to be honest about what "supporting sponsor" means in this context, because it wasn't just a logo on a banner.

Our team was in the organizing room. We were part of the group that selected talks, shaped the agenda, and made sure the event ran smoothly on the day. This was months of work by volunteers who genuinely care about the Serbian cybersecurity community and we're proud to have been part of it.

We didn't get involved to get visibility. We got involved because this is the kind of thing we think the industry needs more of. An event that lowers the barrier to entry. That gives first-time speakers a stage. That makes world-class security content accessible to a student in Belgrade who can't afford a Black Hat ticket.

That's what BSides does. That's why we backed it.

What This Means for the Region

Serbia has talented security professionals. It has strong academic institutions, a growing IT industry, and a community of people who are genuinely passionate about the field. What it hasn't had, until now is a flagship community event to bring all of that together.

BSides Belgrade 2026 changed that. And the fact that the talks were packed, that the CTF drew serious competitors, that the hallways were full of conversations long after the sessions ended, that tells us there's real appetite for more. We'll be back next year. And we hope you will be too.
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Follow What Comes Next

Talk recordings will be uploaded to the BSides Belgrade YouTube channel in the coming weeks, all freely available. Follow BSides Belgrade on LinkedIn, Instagram (@bsidesbelgrade), and X (@BSidesBelgrade) for the announcement.

And if you want to stay up to date with what we're seeing from the frontlines of cybersecurity from event recaps to threat research to practical security guides follow We Secure Insights.

We Secure What Matters.

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