Sponsorship Opportunities

FIRST, The Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams, seeks sponsorships for its upcoming conference to be held in Seville, Spain from June 17 – 22, 2007. Well-attended, well-received and well-reviewed, past conferences have attracted more than 300 participants from around the world. Due to the ever-changing nature of today’s complex business, technology, and political environments, record attendance is expected at this conference. The combined international constituency served by FIRST member teams alone is enormous, reaching millions. Sponsorship opportunities are limited and are on a first-come, first-served basis, so you must act quickly to ensure your organization shares the spotlight at this unique event.

Sponsorship benefits

Access to worldwide computer security experts

Sponsorship provides an exceptional opportunity to show your organization’s commitment to best practice security. For those in computer security, the operating system environment, networking, and telecommunications industries, sponsorship opens the doors to focused access to a highly influential group of computer security incident response experts from around the globe. When you sponsor the event, you will:

• Reach an expected target audience of 400-500 attendees, each a significant figure from industry, commerce, government (including the military and intelligence services), law-enforcement or academia.
• Increase worldwide awareness of your organization’s products and services
• Gain access to computer security decision-makers from corporations, governments, and educational institutions
• Be recognized as a key supporter of FIRST’s goals of worldwide coordination and cooperation for the handling of computer security incidents
• Demonstrate your organization’s commitment to best practice security in a fast-growing community of security practitioners

Who attends?

Previous conference attendees have included many of our 180 FIRST member teams, such as Merrill Lynch, Cisco, Microsoft, Deutsche Bank, Symantec, Citigroup, Siemens, HP, Goldman Sachs, CERT/CC, British Telecom, and Oxford University, to name but a few. You do not need to be a member of FIRST to attend or sponsor. Attendees include:

• Policy and decision makers who direct overall computer security
• Law enforcement staff who are involved in investigating cyber crimes
• Legal counsel who work with policy and decision makers in establishing security policies
• Government managers and senior executives who are responsible for protecting Government systems and national critical infrastructures
• Any incident response and security team with responsibility for coordinating computer security incidents
• Senior managers directly charged with protecting their corporate infrastructure
• Technical staff who determine security product needs and implements solutions
• Anyone wanting to learn more about computer security in general or aspiring to set up an incident handling team

The Conference

The conference is a five-day event, comprising two days of Tutorials and three days of Plenary Sessions focused on either Business or Technical issues. These include paper presentations, keynote speeches, panel discussions and birds-of-a-feather Sessions

New features at the 2007 conference will include:

• GeekZone – Presentations with a Hands-On Format aimed at smaller, more technical audiences of up to 30 people.
• Lightning Talks - short presentations or speeches by any attendee on any topic
• Daily Global Security News Podcast - Outlining latest Security News, highlights from the Conference and Interviews with Conference Attendees
• Special Interest Groups – at the 2006 FIRST conference, for example, the vendors’ Special Interest Group held breakthrough talks with delegates from national security co-ordination teams, and a law enforcement Special Interest Group came into existence.
• Beer 'n Gear, where vendors or providers demonstrate equipment - A great opportunity to show or demonstrate equipment to our delegates while helping them to relax in a friendly environment after the day’s proceedings. While delegates enjoy snacks and beer, your company’s two representatives walk and talk them through the key features of your latest technology. Your guests here will be the people whose opinions play a critical part in buying decisions made back at their workplaces. In addition, your representatives receive complimentary tickets to our conference.
• Vendor Booths
• Security Challenge – “live” security tests
• Conference Dinner with top-level entertainment

Sponsorship Levels

Primary Sponsorships

Our elite Diamond Sponsorship receives the maximum visibility at the conference and the Platinum sponsor is recognized as the conference sponsor before, during, and following the conference. Platinum, Gold and Silver Sponsors receive varying levels of visibility at the conference appropriate to their investment. These sponsorships are an excellent opportunity to become involved and recognized within the incident response community. For known security organizations, these sponsorships allow visible recognition of support at security events and education.

Supporting Sponsorships

Support Sponsorships are a la carte opportunities to become actively involved in a FIRST conference. These sponsorships are an excellent way to begin participation within the computer security incident response arena. For established sponsors, these support sponsorships provide targeted brand delivery opportunities and are available to all interested parties, FIRST team or not.

Because FIRST is dedicated to the protection and promotion of World Wide Web's integrity, we have decided this year to be consistent throughout our activities, and apply an ethical approach to our sponsorship goods. We are therefore trying wherever possible to ensure we buy nothing which is produced in a sweat-shop or manufactured in any way which exploits or underpays people in other countries: fair-trade principles are being introduced to reflect our members' commitment to social and environmental responsibility and ethical business practices.

Sponsorship is not limited to financial support per se, but can also take the form of provision of hardware/software etc. Should your company be interested in a sponsorship package not listed in this brochure please feel free to contact us at first-2007@first.org to discuss your interests.

If you would like to sponsor the FIRST conference, please contact Phoebe Boelter <pboelter@caps-ltd.com>.

If you would like to sponsor the FIRST conference, please fill out the Sponsorship Request Form at the Sponsorship Brochure .

Please see also the Sponsorship Terms and Conditions.