Why the circle exists
40
Founding members
3
City chapters (Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad)
9
Incidents walked end-to-end
0
Vendors in the room
VULNCON has spent years putting researchers, engineers, and vendors in one hall. The talks are public, the recordings go up, and the work gets scrutinised. That openness is the point, and it is also the limit. The people who had to disclose the incident, brief the board, and answer the regulator could not say what actually happened from a stage with a camera on it.
So the conversation moved to the corridor, then to dinner, then to a WhatsApp thread that nobody wanted a record of. It was the most useful part of the week and the least organised. VULN-ESC is that corridor, run properly: a standing circle for the executives who carry the decision, with the rules written down and enforced.
It is convened under the VULNCON banner and staffed by the same team. That means the researcher who found the bug and the CISO who had to disclose it are both a phone call away. That is the whole reason this circle can do something a peer network alone cannot.