The CISO capacity gap sits at the heart of current cyber debates and drives the agenda of this summit. Security leaders must make trade offs across teams, tooling and supplier choices to deliver resilience with limited resources.
Dates and venue
The 18th Annual Mid Year Summit takes place on 15 October 2026 at Park Plaza Victoria, London. The single‑day format compacts technical sessions and real world case studies aimed at leaders responsible for prioritisation under constraint.
Who attends
Job titles attending range from CISO and heads of information security to heads of cyber threat intelligence, global security managers, payment and fraud leads, and heads of incident response. That mix creates a concentration of decision makers focused on identity, automation, third party assurance and resilience testing.
Core themes in the programme
Organisers frame the event around pragmatic decisions for CISOs. AI and quantum readiness are presented as cross cutting risks, including agent identity for non human actors, data leakage when automation is involved and AI driven anti phishing techniques. Other technical strands include cloud native posture management, continuous attack surface discovery and practical SOAR implementations. The programme also discusses how regulatory frameworks shift expectations of security from technical teams to system level resilience.
How to approach B2B outreach at the summit
- Target by problem not by product. Speak to delegates about capacity shortfalls and decision frameworks rather than feature lists.
- Bring short case studies. Concise evidence of reduced analyst workload or measurable time to contain incidents is more persuasive than generic brochures.
- Prepare regulatory evidence packs. Explain how your solution supports auditability and compliance workstreams without overpromising legal outcomes.
- Emphasise integrations. Demonstrate end to end data flows between SIEM, EDR, cloud APIs and ticketing systems so teams can see operational impact.
- Book focused meetings. Short one to one sessions aimed at priorities such as identity governance or third party risk accelerate commercial conversations with security leadership.
What to prioritise in sessions and stands
Attend sessions that reveal operational metrics and decision criteria. Look for examples where teams have documented residual capacity gaps as accepted business risk and for vendors showing automation that reduces manual toil while preserving audit trails. Pay attention to talks on crypto agility and long term protection for sensitive datasets if your product targets financial, telecom or critical infrastructure sectors.
Closing recommendation
If your proposition helps CISOs bridge capacity constraints, orient conversations around governance of identity, pragmatic automation and constrained outsourcing. Produce a simple decision matrix showing what to retain in house and what to outsource with controls. Review the full agenda and registration at http://akjassociates.com/event/midyear and schedule meetings in advance to make the day productive.
