Homelabs for hackers: Breaking things at home so you don’t do it at work

This session is a light-hearted but practical walkthrough of building your own cybersecurity-focused homelab—from bare-metal to “barely works but secure enough.”

Presented by a security engineer who learned everything the hard way (and has the uptime alerts and angry housemates to prove it), this talk demystifies what it takes to spin up a full-featured homelab designed to teach core cyber and IT fundamentals. No vendor sales pitch. No certifications. Just real tech, broken configs, and “I definitely meant to do that” moments.

Whether you're new to cybersecurity or trying to connect the dots between theory and hands-on skills, a homelab is your sandbox, your fortress… and occasionally the reason Netflix stops working during dinner. This session will walk through how to build one on a realistic budget using open-source tools and retired enterprise gear (hello, eBay), and how it helped the speaker upskill across networking, security monitoring, automation, and resilience.

Key takeaways:

Also covered: the experience of triggering home-grade P1 incidents by “just rebooting one thing quickly” and taking down the entire household's Wi-Fi. Learn how to troubleshoot under pressure when your partner and children are standing over your shoulder asking why the TV won't load. Because nothing builds cyber resilience like angry users who live with you.

This isn’t just a show-and-tell. Attendees will walk away with starter templates, configuration snippets, and setup documentation to help build their own homelabs. Whether you want to start small or go full tinfoil-hat mode, these resources will jumpstart your journey.

Expect humour, war stories, and screenshots of lovingly over-engineered dashboards. Whether you're in uni, just broke into the industry, or trying to stand up a secure lab at home, this session will give you practical inspiration and a realistic roadmap to follow—no subscription fees required.