About VulnOptiCON
VulnOptiCON (formerly Vuln4Cast) is a FIRST colloquium dedicated to exploring and sharing practical and creative ways to put vulnerability, configuration, or exploit data to work. Our goal is to make the workshop as interactive as possible, so that as a community, we can inform and strengthen each other’s outcomes, adopt and adapt new ways of thinking, and uncover new opportunities.
VulnOptiCON provides a space for practitioners with real world experience, brilliant data magicians, and up and coming future security leaders to inform, probe, and exchange ideas. We invite attendees to share real world pain points, incubate new ideas and approaches to solving them, and to look ahead to how the vulnerability and exploit landscape will evolve. For sponsors, this is an opportunity to get ahead of the issues that will affect you in the future, and test and get feedback on your thinking as it develops. Your sponsorship is an investment in the pipeline of ideas that will eventually become the tools your team depends on.
In addition, student bursaries bring talented individuals — many completing postgraduate degrees in computer science, statistics, or information security — directly into the conference foyer. This is an opportunity for sponsors to help shape and recruit the next generation of vulnerability management and research professionals.
Luxembourg itself is a natural hub for European cyber security hiring, and VulnOptiCon’s single-track, workshop format means every delegate has time for real conversations rather than rushing between seminar rooms.
- Influence the research agenda that will define next-generation vulnerability prioritisation tools.
- Meet and recruit outstanding early-career professionals before your competitors do.
- Put your organisation’s hard problems in front of the people best placed to solve them.
- Demonstrate commitment to the security community — beyond sales cycles and product launches.
- Receive prominent logo placement across all print, digital, and press materials.
- Be named by the organising committee to journalists attending dedicated press briefings.
| Sponsorship |
Pricing |
Benefits |
| PLATINUM |
€15,000 |
- Headline venue sponsorship — your name on the venue signage
- Maximum student ticket allocation (10 free places)
- Largest logo on all print, digital, and press materials
- Named first in all journalist briefings and press releases
- Dedicated recruitment stand in the main foyer
- Invitation to submit a position paper for the ‘Problems from Practice’ session
|
| GOLD |
€10,000 |
- Venue sponsorship
- Free student ticket allocation
- Premium logo placement on all materials
- Named at press briefings & journalist round-tables
- Recruitment stand in the conference foyer
|
| SILVER |
€5,000 |
- Catering sponsorship
- Logo on menus & refreshment stations
- Logo on all promotional materials
- Named in opening & closing remarks
- Recruitment stand in the conference foyer
|
| BRONZE |
€2,500 |
- Lanyard sponsorship
- Logo on every delegate lanyard
- Logo on all promotional materials
- Named in programme and website
- Table in the conference networking area
|
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Implement a Challenge Sponsorship, whereby a sponsoring organisation proposes a vulnerability-or-exploit-data-related question or challenge for the VulnOptiCON community to work on.
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The VulnOptiCON management team will coordinate the process over a multi-month period (duration to be agreed), including initial promotion and sign up, ongoing communication, regular check-ins, and the final presentation and sharing of results.
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The VulnOptiCON event in September (23-25) will provide an opportunity for a first major check in between the Challenge Sponsor and the participants.
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For the final presentations, we will either identify a relevant Europe-based event, or coordinate a dedicated virtual or physical meeting.
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Challenge questions will be vetted by the management team for suitability.
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Specific timing, publication or confidentiality expectations, and prizes are all negotiable depending on the Sponsor and their challenge, and in accordance with the values and expectations of VulnOptiCON and its community.
Costs:
- £10,000 sponsorship for initial set up, promotion, coordination, and participation during VulnOptiCON.
- £5000 - £15,000 for additional coordination, promotion, and support organisation of the final presentations. Agreed with Sponsor dependent on the specific requirements of the challenge.
- A reasonable and attractive prize amount for the winner - TBC depending on the scale of challenge. Paid either directly to Challenge winner or via FIRST as the Sponsor prefers.
- Optional budget to support travel and accommodation for international competitors invited to present findings at an in-person meeting.
All tiers include logo placement on the VulnOptiCON website, the printed programme, and the digital slide deck shown between sessions. Bespoke packages, such as sponsoring specific workshops, panel sessions, or the evening social, are available on request.
Our single request is that sponsors engage authentically with the research community. Gold-tier and Platinum sponsors are invited (not required, but warmly encouraged) to submit a short position paper describing a real, unsolved vulnerability management challenge they face. These papers are presented in a dedicated ‘Problems from Practice’ session that consistently receives the highest delegate satisfaction scores of the programme. This is the conversation the security industry has been missing: practitioners setting the agenda, researchers responding with method, and students learning what the problems actually look like in production.
Audience & Reach
| Delegate Profile |
Approximate Share |
| Vulnerability management and cybersecurity professionals |
30% |
| Academic researchers, data scientists |
20% |
| Government and national CSIRT staff |
15% |
| University students |
20% |
| Vendors and consultants |
10% |
| Invited media |
5% |
Organised Under FIRST
VulnOptiCON is run under the auspices of FIRST: the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams, a globally respected non-profit that has been building and sustaining security communities for over three decades. Running VulnOptiCON under this umbrella means sponsors are associated with an organisation whose reputation for impartial, community-first values is unimpeachable. It also means your logo appears in the context of an event that journalists covering the security beat already know and trust.
To discuss sponsorship options, request a media pack, or ask about bespoke arrangements, please contact the organising committee via FIRST.org. events@first.org
All sponsorship funds are administered transparently under FIRST.org’s non-profit governance framework.
