Speaking
Conference, keynote, panel, and executive audience topics focused on resilience, incident leadership, and modern cybersecurity strategy.
Travis has delivered keynotes, panels, and executive workshops at security conferences, corporate leadership summits, and academic events across Canada. Every engagement is tailored to the specific audience — no generic slide decks.
For event organizers
Speaker kit
Bios and intro, headshots, talk abstracts, one-sheet, and technical requirements. The full kit is emailed to you; the one-sheet is available right now.
Signature Talks
1.
Surviving a Swatting: Real-World Tips and Tricks
On January 3rd, 2025, Travis Barlow became the target of a swatting attack. In this talk, he shares the raw, firsthand account of what happened — and, more importantly, what he did to make it through safely. While the subject matter is serious, this session is built around practical, actionable guidance. You'll walk away with real tips you can use to protect yourself and your family if you're ever targeted, as well as strategies for pursuing accountability against the people responsible. Whether you're a security professional, content creator, public figure, or simply someone who wants to be prepared — this talk is for you.
Best for: Security conferences, public figures, content creators, general audiences
Format: Keynote (30–45 min) or breakout session
2.
The Cyber Resilience Leadership Playbook
Drawing on 600+ incident response engagements, this keynote deconstructs what separates organizations that recover quickly from those that don't. Travis moves beyond the standard "prevent and detect" framework to address the leadership decisions, authority structures, and cultural conditions that determine how an organization performs under real attack conditions. Practical, direct, and grounded in operational experience rather than theory.
Best for: Security conferences, CISO summits, board and executive leadership events
Format: Keynote (45–60 min) or executive workshop (half day)
3.
Executive Leadership During Cyber Incidents
When a significant cyber incident strikes, the technical team knows what to do. The question is whether leadership does. This session focuses on the decisions that fall outside the security team's authority: when to notify, who decides, how to communicate under pressure, and how to maintain organizational function while incident response is active. Designed for executives, boards, and crisis leadership teams.
Best for: C-suite and board audiences, corporate leadership events, crisis management programs
Format: Keynote (30–45 min), panel, or tabletop workshop
4.
Lessons from 600+ Incident Response Engagements
A frank, pattern-based talk on what Travis has actually seen across hundreds of incidents — the decisions that helped, the ones that didn't, and the organizational conditions that determine outcome more than any technology choice. Rich with specific (anonymized) case detail and directly actionable for security practitioners and leaders alike.
Best for: Security conferences, practitioner audiences, incident response teams
Format: Keynote (45–60 min) or in-depth breakout session
5.
Security Leadership in the Age of AI
AI is changing the attack surface, the defender's toolkit, and the expectations placed on security leadership simultaneously. This talk addresses the strategic questions executives and boards need to answer now: how to govern AI adoption securely, what AI-enabled threats actually look like at the organizational level, and how to build security programs that are durable as the technology landscape continues to shift.
Best for: Technology leadership conferences, boards, CISOs and security executives
Format: Keynote (45 min) or panel discussion
6.
Building Cybersecurity Communities: The AtlSecCon Story
How do you build a security community from scratch with no budget and no precedent? This session shares the 15-year story of AtlSecCon — from 42 attendees in 2011 to 1,700+ today — and extracts the principles that apply to any organization trying to build security culture, run a community program, or create educational initiatives that last.
Best for: Security program leaders, community builders, academic and non-profit audiences
Format: Keynote (30–45 min) or fireside chat
7.
Offensive AI & LLM Exploitation: The New Red Team Frontier
In just 18 months, more than 70 open-source AI offensive tools have emerged, autonomous agents are compromising Active Directory environments for under $30, and 94% of production LLMs have been shown vulnerable to prompt injection and context poisoning. This talk walks through how the economics of offense have changed, dissects real exploitation techniques (direct and indirect prompt injection, cross-agent privilege escalation, MCP-orchestrated attacks), and examines documented case studies like CyberStrikeAI and ServiceNow Now Assist (CVE-2025-12420). Attendees leave with a defensible AI architecture model and a Monday-morning action list for inventorying and red-teaming their own AI surface.
Best for: Security conferences, red and blue teams, CISOs, AI governance and platform leaders
Format: Keynote (45–60 min) or technical deep-dive workshop
8.
The Dark Side of Infosec: What the Industry Doesn't Want You to Say Out Loud
The cybersecurity industry generates over $200 billion annually — yet breaches keep getting worse, burnout is epidemic, and trust is eroding. This unflinching talk walks through the five shadows the industry refuses to acknowledge: the human cost of burnout and mental health (76% of professionals report burnout), the corruption of commerce through FUD and security theater, the scapegoat economy turning CISOs into sacrificial lambs (18-month average tenure), the criminal mirror of our own tools becoming weapons, and the talent abyss failing the next generation (4.8M unfilled roles). It closes with a direct call to action for leaders willing to choose honesty over optics.
Best for: Security conferences, CISO summits, leadership and culture-focused events
Format: Keynote (45 min) or fireside chat
9.
The Calm After the Breach: Why I Built HackFirstAid.com
It started with a frantic message from one of his mother's friends — "I think my Facebook was hacked." When Travis searched for a calm, plain-English recovery guide to send her, he found nothing useful: scattered forum advice, 40-page government PDFs, and guidance written by security professionals for security professionals. With $16.6B lost to online scams in 2024 and 429M social media accounts compromised globally in 2025, the gap was hiding in plain sight. This talk shares the story behind HackFirstAid.com — a free, no-login, private-by-design recovery platform — and makes the case that cybersecurity has been an exclusive club for too long. You don't hand a bleeding person a medical textbook; you give them first aid. The same principle should apply to digital emergencies. A call to action for technologists, entrepreneurs, and leaders to build for everyday people, not just other experts.
Best for: General audiences, community and civic events, technology leadership conferences, entrepreneurship and design audiences
Format: Keynote (30–45 min) or fireside chat