Event: 17th Annual Billington CyberSecurity Summit
Dates: September 8-10, 2026
Location: Walter E. Washington Convention Center, 801 Allen Y. Lew Place NW, Washington, DC 20001
Host: Billington CyberSecurity
Theme: Reducing Risk in an Age of AI-Enabled Threats
Expected attendance: 3,000+
Billington has been running this summit since 2010, and it has grown into the closest thing federal cybersecurity has to an annual general meeting. This year’s edition runs three days and carries more than 50 panels, breakouts and fireside chats, with over 250 speakers drawn from government, industry and allied services. Thirty-three sessions carry an artificial intelligence tag. Cloud security accounts for another 16, and cyber threat intelligence for 13.
Why the AI Framing Matters Here
Plenty of conferences have bolted AI onto an existing agenda. This one has built the whole theme around a narrower question: what happens when adversaries get the same tooling defenders just adopted. Sessions cover the weaponization of AI by hostile actors, token theft, and living off the land attacks, where intruders use software already present on a compromised machine instead of dropping detectable malware. That last category has become the defining problem of the past two years for critical infrastructure operators, because the intrusion looks like ordinary administration until it doesn’t.
The rest of the programme reaches beyond AI. Quantum computing, space systems security, Zero Trust architecture and nation-state campaign analysis all get dedicated time.
Government Speakers
The federal roster is unusually senior. Sean Cairncross, National Cyber Director at the White House, headlines a list that includes Scott Kupor, Director of the US Office of Personnel Management, and Kirsten Davies, CIO at the Department of War. Nick Andersen attends as Acting Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and Michael Ellis as Deputy Director of the CIA.
Military and intelligence representation runs deep. Lt. Gen. Paul T. Stanton speaks in his dual capacity as Commander of the Department of War Cyber Defense Command and Director of the Defense Information Systems Agency. Katherine Sutton, Assistant Secretary of War for Cyber Policy and Principal Cyber Advisor to the Secretary of War, is also on the programme, alongside Cameron Stanley, the department’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer. From the civilian agencies, Brett Leatherman of the FBI Cyber Division, Pedro Allende from DHS Science and Technology, and Andrew McClure from the Department of Energy round out the list.
The Allied Contingent
Billington has always leaned on partner nations for its programming, and the 2026 lineup is broad. Lieutenant General Michelle McGuinness attends as Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator, with Stephanie Crowe from the Australian Signals Directorate’s cyber security centre. Richard Horne, chief executive of the UK National Cyber Security Centre, and Rajiv Gupta, head of the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, cover two more of the Five Eyes.
Beyond that grouping, Nevena Rupp of Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security speaks on digitization and identity, Ory Schein attends as Israel Cyber Attaché from the Israel National Cyber Directorate, and Ivan Kalabashkin, Deputy Head of the Cyber Department at Ukraine’s SBU, brings the perspective of a service that has spent four years under sustained state-sponsored attack. One of the sessions covers building a shared analytic framework across allied nations, which is a harder problem than it sounds given how differently these services classify and share.
Registration and Access
Early bird and standard pricing have both closed. Last call rates are $2,595 for corporate attendees, $1,395 for small businesses under 50 employees, $895 for non-profit and academic registrants with a verified .edu or .org address, and $145 for enrolled students. US government and military personnel attend free with a verified .gov or .mil address, and a provisional option exists for those who cannot use one, including international government registrants.
Credentialed press also attend at no charge, with advance registration and approval, at billingtoncybersummit.com/register. Press credentials are checked at the door.
One requirement catches people out. Attendance is limited to citizens of the United States and of allied nations, citizenship is confirmed during registration, and matching government-issued photo identification is checked on site before entry. Anyone planning to bring a colleague on a spare pass should read that page first.
On the Floor
More than 150 exhibitor booths are expected, along with a series of receptions that do most of the actual networking work. Amazon Web Services, Cisco and Leidos are lead underwriters this year. Vendor presence at Billington skews toward companies that already hold federal contracts, so the exhibit hall reads more like a procurement landscape than a startup showcase.
Billington also has a second event on the calendar. Its first Critical Infrastructure CyberSecurity Summit runs November 17-18 in San Antonio, built around the four lifeline sectors of energy, communications, transportation and water.