BSides Manila Launches as the Philippines' First Chapter of the Global Security BSides Community

Manila, Philippines - August 19, 2026 - Inaugural event set for Sunday, 30 August 2026 in Makati City — a PHP 300, open-programme entry point for students, career shifters, and first-time speakers.

BSides is a decentralised, volunteer-run framework for information security events, with more than 1,300 held across 300 cities in 73 countries since 2009. Events are deliberately low-cost and built on an open Call for Presenters; speaking slots are never sold to sponsors. Tickets for BSides Manila are PHP 300.

Filipino professionals are a substantial presence in security operations centres, threat intelligence teams, and incident response practices worldwide. The Philippine IT and business process management sector employed approximately 1.9 million full-time workers and generated about USD 40 billion in export revenue in 2025, with security operations embedded throughout that workforce. What is in short supply, the organisers say, is not capability but circulation — regular, affordable venues where that expertise is shared at home rather than travelling out of the country with the person who holds it. The Philippines has an established security community scene built over nearly two decades; BSides Manila is intended to add to it, not replace any part of it.

“Our people run SOCs in Sydney, London, Dubai, and Singapore — what we want to add is more rooms at home where a student in Manila can sit beside them and ask how they did it.”

— Roberto Tayag, Co-Organizer, BSides Manila

The single-track programme opens at 12:30 PM, a deliberate choice for students and volunteers travelling across Metro Manila. Confirmed talks cover behavioural security assessments (Rei Nikolai Magnaye), sleeper-agent backdoors in agentic AI systems (Humphrey Cogay), and practical threat modelling with MITRE ATT&CK (Steve Espino), alongside a panel on breaking into cybersecurity and open lightning talks that any attendee may join on the day. Organisers expect 50 to 80 participants. UST SITE, the Society of Information Technology Enthusiasts of the University of Santo Tomas College of Information and Computing Sciences, is the event's primary community partner.

“What actually closes the skills gap is practitioners talking honestly to each other about what broke and how they fixed it — that conversation is free, it just needs a room.”

— Gil Tario II, Co-Organizer, BSides Manila

The organizers are gearing up for a bigger event in 2027 as well as satellite events in different universities across the country. We want to bring the cybersecurity industry to everyone.