The dust has settled from another incredible DefCon, and my head is still spinning from three intense days of cybersecurity immersion. DefCon 33 ran August 7–10, 2025 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, and this year felt energized. More focused. More urgent. More connected to the real challenges we face every day in defending our digital world.
As I sit here reflecting on everything that happened, one thing stands out: this wasn’t just another conference. It was a glimpse into the future of cybersecurity, where defenders finally have the tools and community to turn the tables on attackers.
Supporting the Blue Team Revolution
This year, DeepTempo proudly sponsored Blue Team Village (BTV) for its eighth year at DefCon. The first day was dedicated to helping set up the village, getting everything ready for the influx of defenders who would fill those halls over the next three days.
Once the village was operational and the real action began, seeing hundreds of defenders sharing knowledge, trading war stories, and genuinely excited about defense? That energy was infectious.
Blue Team Village describes itself as “a place and a community built for and by defenders. It’s a place to gather, talk, share, and learn from each other about the latest tools, technologies, and tactics our community can use.” Being part of supporting that mission felt incredibly meaningful.
The village buzzes with activity once it gets going. Session tracks covered Incident Response, Forensics, Cyber Threat Hunting, Detection Engineering, Operational Technology, and Insider Threat/Risk. Every conversation you overhear is someone sharing a real technique they’ve used to catch threats that traditional tools missed.
This is where the future of cybersecurity lives. Not in vendor booths promising magic solutions, but in defenders sharing practical knowledge that actually works.
Winning Where It Matters Most
The highlight of my three days at DefCon? Our team took first place in one of Blue Team Village’s premier cybersecurity competitions.
The Blue Team Village CTF challenged us to investigate attacks against a fictitious company, leveraging diverse cyber defense skills including Incident Response, Forensics, Malware Analysis, Threat Intelligence, and Threat Hunting.
What made this CTF special wasn’t just the technical challenges. It featured “challenges based on actual cybersecurity incidents and defensive strategies used by security professionals” with scenarios that felt ripped from real SOC environments.
Working through those challenges with my team reminded me why I love this field. There’s something uniquely satisfying about piecing together attack timelines, hunting down IoCs (Indicators of Compromise), and understanding exactly how an attacker moved through a network. Every flag we captured represented a real technique that makes defenders better at their jobs.
AI Meets Reality: A Vision for the Future
One of the most enlightening moments came from watching my colleague Josiah Lashley speak on a panel about implementing AI into business operations. As DeepTempo’s Founding AI Engineer specializing in ML x Cybersecurity and Foundational Models, Josiah brought a perspective that perfectly captured where our industry is heading.
The panel discussion highlighted something crucial: we’re not past the hype phase of AI in cybersecurity. The conversation wasn’t about whether AI would transform our field, but how to implement it responsibly and effectively. This mirrors what we’re seeing across the industry, where 68% of professionals agree that within the next two years, they will be able to effectively utilize Gen AI as part of their role.
Listening to Josiah and other panelists discuss real AI implementations, not theoretical possibilities, reinforced why we built our LogLM (Log Language Model) technology. The future belongs to defenders who can harness AI to detect threats that traditional rules-based systems miss entirely.
The Rare Joy of Technical Deep Dives
DefCon provides something increasingly rare in our professional lives: the chance to completely nerd out with people who get it. Every conversation becomes a technical deep dive. Someone mentions a novel attack vector, and suddenly you’re surrounded by five people sharing detection strategies.
This year, those conversations felt more urgent. With 30,000 vulnerabilities disclosed last year, a 17 percent increase from previous figures, and ransomware continuing its relentless evolution, the stakes keep rising.
But here’s what gives me hope: the quality of defensive thinking I witnessed at DefCon. Defenders are getting smarter, more collaborative, and more innovative. The Blue Team Village crowds weren’t just bigger than previous years; they were more engaged, asking better questions, and sharing more sophisticated techniques.
Team Time: The Human Element
One of the most valuable aspects of DefCon was the opportunity for our DeepTempo team to spend quality time together in person. Remote work has many advantages, but there’s something irreplaceable about sitting in the same room, bouncing ideas off each other, and building the kind of trust that comes from shared experiences.
We spent hours discussing product direction, customer challenges, and the technical problems we’re uniquely positioned to solve. Those conversations happen differently when you’re not looking at each other through a screen. Ideas flow more freely. Connections form more naturally.
In an industry facing a global cybersecurity workforce gap of 4.8 million unfilled positions, building strong teams becomes even more critical. DefCon reminded us that behind all the technology and automation, cybersecurity remains fundamentally about people working together to solve complex problems.
New Skills, New Challenges
The Lockpick Village offered a completely different kind of challenge. After successfully picking my first five locks, I walked away with a new appreciation for the patience and precision required in physical security.
There’s something deeply satisfying about the tactile feedback of understanding how a lock mechanism works and successfully manipulating it. Each lock required a different approach, different tools, and a different level of finesse. By the time I’d worked through those five locks, I had developed a genuine respect for the craft of lockpicking and the security professionals who understand physical vulnerabilities as well as digital ones.
Unexpected Connections
Some of the best DefCon moments happen completely by chance. Sitting down next to a stranger who turned out to be from just a few miles from where I grew up. Running into my former boss from a completely different career and seeing him in an entirely new context. These serendipitous encounters remind you how interconnected our community really is.
DefCon attracts people from every background imaginable, united by curiosity about how systems work and how they can be made more secure. Those random conversations often lead to the most interesting insights and lasting professional relationships.
Looking Forward: The Defender’s Advantage
As I think about everything that happened at DefCon 33, one theme emerges clearly: defenders are finally gaining the advantage.
For too long, cybersecurity felt like an uphill battle. Attackers moved faster, adapted quicker, and seemed to have all the technological advantages. But DefCon showed me a community of defenders who are leveraging AI, automation, and collective intelligence to change that dynamic.
The Blue Team Village wasn’t just about sharing defensive techniques; it was about building a movement. When hundreds of defenders gather to solve problems together, when companies like DeepTempo invest in tools that actually make defenders more effective, when conferences like DefCon provide platforms for knowledge sharing, the balance starts to shift.
The challenges haven’t gotten easier. If anything, they’re more complex than ever. But the tools, techniques, and community available to defenders have never been stronger.
The Road Ahead
DefCon 33 reinforced my belief that we’re entering a new era of cybersecurity. One where defenders have access to AI tools that can detect novel threats in real-time. Where communities like Blue Team Village accelerate knowledge sharing across the entire industry. Where companies prioritize building solutions that actually make security teams more effective, not just add more complexity to their environments.
The conversations, competitions, and connections from DefCon will influence our work for months to come. Every technique learned, every relationship built, every insight gained becomes part of our collective defense.
Until DefCon 34, we’ll keep building, learning, and defending. The attackers may have gotten a head start, but the defenders are catching up fast.
And when we gather in Las Vegas next August, we’ll have even more victories to celebrate and knowledge to share. The future of cybersecurity looks brighter than it has in years, and events like DefCon are lighting the way forward.
Want to learn more about how AI is transforming cybersecurity defense? Connect with us at DeepTempo to see how our LogLM technology is helping defenders detect threats that traditional tools miss.
