From June 22-27 2025, PaCSON sponsored two PaCSON members to travel to Copenhagen, Denmark to attend the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams Annual Conference (FIRSTCON25). The conference was conducted over six days and included networking opportunities, presentations and various workshops.
Established in 1990, the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) is an international non-profit association of Computer Security and Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs), Product Security and Incident Response Teams (PSIRTs), and independent security researchers from the public, private, and academic sectors.
FIRST is a Partner of PaCSON, and aims to foster cooperation and coordination in incident prevention, to stimulate rapid reaction to incidents, and to promote information sharing between members and the community at large.
Throughout the six day event, PaCSON representatives engaged in a variety of workshops, presentations, and lightning talks. This included presentations from Ukraine, Switzerland, Spain, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom. Topics included digital forensics, incident response, case studies, artificial intelligence and many more.
The two PaCSON members supported to attend this event were Terianna Kourabi from Kiribati, and Paige Tutii from Palau. Also in attendance was the PaCSON Secretariat, as well as members from Tonga, New Zealand, Vanuatu, and Australia. Partners from CCCS, CISA, ANSSI and FIRST also rounded out the Pacific contingent.
On Wednesday 25 June, the PaCSON community, as well as some new friends from outside of the community, came together for a Pacific Networking Morning Tea. This event served as an opportunity for PaCSON community and likemindeds to discuss matters of cyber importance for the region, and to get to know one another better.
The conference was very well received by PaCSON members. PaCSON representative Paige Tutii highlighted the critical importance of building cyber safety resilience especially in small island nations like Palau by stating, “Attending FIRSTCON25 has been an invaluable experience, especially from a law enforcement and incident response perspective. Being surrounded by global cyber experts provided a unique opportunity to understand how technical knowledge, collaboration, and early response strategies can strengthen our frontlines. I return home with a renewed commitment to support the development of cybersecurity frameworks that will enhance our policing agency's ability to serve and protect in the digital space."
PaCSON eagerly awaits next year’s conference which will be held in Denver, USA. In the meantime, PaCSON members plan to implement their newly acquired knowledge and skills within their respective organisations. Through continued development of our cyber security capabilities, the Pacific and broader region will build cyber resilience in order to recover quicker from adversary attacks and to better protect our blue pacific.
