Security for the people
By the people

Mainland Advanced Research Society is a volunteer driven, non-profit organization focused on researching new ways to protect ourselves online, educating, and supporting our communities.

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Our Programs

The following programs are managed by Mainland Advanced Research Society.

BSides Vancouver
Annual two-day gathering for security professionals and the greater tech community
VanCitySec
Informal meetup of like-minded security professionals every second Thursday
Ready Room Briefings
Exchange knowledge and learn about current trends and challenges

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The Mainland Advanced Research Society or MARS, is a not for profit organization based out of Vancouver, British Columbia focused on developing, supporting and inspiring bright minds within the local community by hosting conferences, social events and educational workshops.

Our Programs in Detail

Conferences



BSides Vancouver is a two-day, high-caliber gathering for information security professionals, hackers, coders and the greater tech community. During the conference attendees will share, discuss and learn about information security, privacy and technology in the heart of Vancouver.

BSides Conferences are a little different than the usual security conference format. BSides are not-for-profit, independently run, community supported, low cost security conferences that happen all over the world. The majority of security conferences these days are nothing more than paid for speaking slots and not smart people sharing smart things. We are out to change this.

Social Events



VanCitySec is an attempt to get something started in Vancouver similar to SeaSec, ChiSec & STLSec. The CitySec meetups are an informal meetup of like-minded security professionals. Are you an security professional? You are if you (ever) write firewall rules, read log files, apply patches, follow BugTraq, help select products, rack and stack security appliances, find vulnerabilities write secure code, test other people's code, write policies, manage people who do any of these things, assist people who do any of these things, or just want to one day do any of these things.

Educational Workshops



Ready Room Briefings are casual evening events for professionals who want to network, exchange knowledge and learn about current trends and challenges within the information security space. Content will be non-commercial curated topics aligning to the current threat landscape and relevant for engineers and management alike. Our goal is to leverage our community's experience, research and lessons learned to empower your security operations team with actionable intelligence.

Why? Because our adversaries are...

The Board

Contact Us

We actively looking for volunteers and new ideas. Please reach out to us.

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