During the weekend of March 28 to March 29, 2026, Netsoc hosted their annual Capture the Flag event for both internal and external members.

Students were given the opportunity to compete individually or in teams for the chance to win valuable prizes such as monetary rewards, relevant certification vouchers, and other useful tech tools. Whether participating in hands-on challenges like crimping Cat5e wires, technical challenges involving complex cryptography or Linux problems, or tackling intricate tasks such as OSINT or forensics questions, there was truly something for everyone. 

Students had the opportunity to hear from guest speakers who are excelling seniors in the tech field. These speakers include: Nev Kent from Accenture, Gray Kent from the Bank of Canada, Travis Bailey and George Stojanoski from i3 Solutions Inc., Rafael da Rocha from Fortinet, and lastly Prab Cheema from Centric Software. During this panel, participants asked questions that are at the forefront of many students’ minds like, “What certifications are most relevant to the cybersecurity field?” or “How can I gain a competitive edge to land my first internship?”. Students were then given a rare opportunity to speak to these seniors one-on-one and build meaningful, potentially life-changing connections. 

As the event slowly came to a close on the second day, students were scrambling to submit last-minute challenges for a chance to secure first place. Before announcing winners, we would first like to congratulate everyone that participated for their hard work, as we know many of the challenges were no easy feat. Out of all of the participants, five teams achieved the highest scores. From first to fifth place, they were: The High Table, Re;coders, The Flock, arvino, and Gold_Platers. Congratulations once again to all participants and we hope to see you again next year!

Lastly, we’d like to extend a special thank you to all of our sponsors for supporting us in the preparation of TacOps. We could not have done it without: Adaptavist Group / Venue.sh., Verkada, Infinite Cables, Lenovo, i3 Solutions Inc, Wireshark, The Linux Foundation, HexOS, and Ontario Power Generation. We also want to give a thank you to our academic and community partners BITSoc as well as the Faculty of Business & IT @ Ontario Tech University for all of their support.

Thank you to everyone involved, and we look forward to an even more successful TacOps next year!

On March 1st, 2026. The Networking and IT Security Student Association and the Game Development Student Association hosted LAN WAR 2.0, a LAN Party open to all FBIT Students.

Students competed in many various games such as TF2, Minecraft Bingo, Nintendo Games, etc, with snack and pizza breaks in between.

We wanted to thank ConcernedApe and Steel Crate Games for providing copies of Stardew Valley and Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes respectively to our raffle winners, who wasted no time installing and taking turns playing both games.

We also wanted to thank Infinite Cables and Lenovo for the main parts of our Server Infrastructure. Our Technology Team is very proud of the Network Deployment and could not have been done without their products.

LAN WAR 2.0 is almost here, and we’re excited to reveal the full game lineup for this year’s on‑campus LAN hosted by Netsoc in collaboration with the Game Dev Student Association (GDSA).

You’ll be able to jump into classics, party games, and competitive titles, including:

Competitive:

• Team Fortress 2
• Star Wars Battlefront 2
• Project Zomboid
• Minecraft
• Halo: Combat Evolved
• CSGO 1.6
• Worms Armageddon
• Super Smash Bros Ultimate / Brawl
• Super Mario Strikers
• Rocket League
• Mario Kart
• Unreal Tournament

Casual:

• Left 4 Dead 2
• Mario Party
• Among Us

Whether you want to squad up for more competitive matches or just hang out and play casual games, there will be something running all day.

📅 March 1st
⏰ 12:00 PM – 8:00 PM
📍 UB 2080

Thank you to our sponsors Infinite Cables and Lenovo for your generosity!

LAN WAR 2.0 is back. 🎮

Netsoc is bringing LAN WAR 2.0 to campus in collaboration with the Game Dev Student Association (GDSA).

Join us for a full day of LAN gaming, friendly competitive matches, and casual games. Whether you’re playing, watching, or just stopping by, it’s a great chance to connect with other students who are into gaming and tech.

📅 March 1st
⏰ 12:00 PM – 8:00 PM
📍 UB 2080

Thank you to our sponsors Infinite Cables and Lenovo for your generosity!

On November 11 2025, Netsoc associates Haneen Al-musowi and Keegan Gratton proudly hosted our “Staying Safe Online” event at Delpark Homes Centre. The event was informative, giving everyone the opportunity to learn about what it takes to protect themselves online. Netsoc associates spoke about common ways everyday users are misled online, how to spot these red flags, and lastly how to be proactive against these threat actors. 

While the event was open to all, we were elated to see so many peers from our older generations being proactive with their learning. Guests asked questions, held conversations, shared stories, and even participated in interactive “what would you do” questionnaires. Our associates even gave out online tools that guests could download or visit to protect themselves online such as a secure chrome extension ad-blocker, as well as a site that checks the security of their passwords.

By the end of the session, our guests left feeling more confident and secure with their online expertise, ready to face whatever came their way. We are thankful to everyone who attended and would like to give a special thank you to Delpark Homes Centre for giving us the space to teach our community. We hope to run another successful staying safe online event in the near future!

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation's annual flagship event, KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, lasted from November 11th to November 13th in Atlanta Georgia! This global conference convened developers, users, and technologists worldwide to share best practices for building, managing, and servicing cloud-native applications. The event was packed with hands-on workshops, technical talks, and valuable networking opportunities focused on the latest contributions to the open-source community! Some of the main focuses at Kubecon this year was the evolving needs of cloud-native computing, platform engineering and observability!

Ontario Tech's own Networking & IT Student Association (Netsoc) was proud to attend this year, as we were able to engage with key vendors like Chainguard, DDN, Cloudflare, Gmicloud, Harpoon.io, Ngrok, Heroku, Lambda, Tailscale and more! We shared the details of our unique academic program, which focuses not only on up to date technical concepts such as programming, AI, and machine-learning, but most importantly Computer Networking, IT, and Cybersecurity, crucial skills which are only in more demand as the need for skills in programming and AI continue to increase ! Furthermore, we sought the support for our upcoming annual CTF/Hackathon, TacOps! TacOps is recognized as one of the largest Capture The Flag events in the greater Toronto area which attracts over 200 students annually! This event offers the involved companies the dual opportunity to both support Netsoc and the program along with giving them the leverage to network and witness the skills of the emerging talent from the GTA with their own eyes, giving them the choice to recruit them as either interns or hiring them as new-grads after University! This year for TacOps, Netsoc is hopefully looking to go beyond hosting the event on campus and seeking to relocate it in the downtown core of Toronto, Ontario! The goal of this is to attract more students not just from Ontario Tech University, but also from across the GTA as a whole to make the event not only more available for a variety of students in the downtown core, but to also make the event more available for our sponsors for the upcoming CTF!

At the end of the day, Netsoc's primary goal at KubeCon was to forge stronger educational and professional partnerships—benefiting not only our school but also contributing to the strength of the Cybersecurity Market in Canada. Our presence at this premier event has been a tremendous asset in moving us closer to that objective, and we hope to return next year to connect with even more vendors and companies to expand our our school, our club, and our program as a whole!

Chris Panetta and Jackson Barker are searching for 2 more cybersecurity students to compete on our official Netsoc CTF Team! Think you got the skills? Apply below to join us on February 7th. Transportation is included.

Netsoc Nextcloud

Netsoc Nextcloud

On November 1st, The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), Ontario Power Generation (OPG), and Bruce Power were among the guest presenters at Netsoc's lively Nuclear Cybersecurity Workshop in SIR 3110.

Participants got the unique chance to learn firsthand information on nuclear security and operations from specialists in the field, as well as view real-time cyberattack demos and explore the IAEA cyber simulator thanks to Previous Netsoc President Hayden Nolan.

Students also got to experiment with custom detection rules, launch predefined attacks, and see how a SIEM system detects assaults. Furthermore, students interested in cybersecurity and nuclear operations had a rare opportunity to get practical experience with industrial control system simulation tools during this hands-on program.

We would especially want to thank the organisers and all of the presenters for making this an engaging and educational event including Pizza Depot for their delicious Pizza and Professor Khalil El-Khatib for his organization as well as bonus marks for his cryptography course just for attending!

The session with Joe Arnup from Fortinet on October 27 at SIRC 4150 was a deep dive into Fortinet’s technologies and real-world network security practices.

Joe walked us through the full range of Fortinet solutions, from next-generation firewalls and secure SD-WAN to endpoint protection and advanced threat intelligence. His detailed explanations connected architecture, configuration, and practical applications, giving everyone a clearer picture of how Fortinet systems integrate to defend against evolving cyber threats.

It was an insightful afternoon packed with technical depth, practical examples, and professional wisdom from someone with hands-on experience in the field. Big thanks to Joe for sharing his expertise and to everyone who joined the session!

🚨DATE AND TIME CHANGE 🚨

📅Date: October 27th
🕐Time: 2:10 - 5:00PM
📍Location: SIRC 4150

Join us for a session with Joe Arnup from Fortinet

Joe brings deep experience in:
- �Networking routing, switching, firewalls, cabling
- �Operating systems, Windows Server, Linux, macOS
- �Programming, shell scripting, XHTML, JavaScript, VB, CSS

🗣️ Don't miss the chance to learn directly from an industry professional about real-world network security and IT operations.

Registration Link below:

Netsoc Nextcloud

Netsoc Nextcloud

The Future of FinTech (OTFA x Netsoc) was a tremendous success, bringing together students, professionals, and industry leaders for an engaging discussion on how financial technology and digital transformation are reshaping industries across Canada. From banking and payments to AI, blockchain, and data-driven innovation, our panelists shared valuable insights into the technologies redefining financial services and what the future of finance means for the next generation of business, technology, and engineering professionals.

We would also like to extend our gratitude to the Ontario Tech Finance Association (OTFA), including Aviv Dad and incoming president Colton McWilliams, for their partnership and support throughout this collaboration.

We were honoured to welcome our distinguished speakers Sharmika Piratheepan, Dwayne King, Gray Kent, Nev Kent, and Malcolm Jussawalla, who brought diverse perspectives and expertise to the discussion. Following the panel, attendees had the opportunity to network, exchange ideas, and participate in an interactive FinTech game that challenged their creativity and strategic thinking.

The event took place on Monday, October 20, 2025, at the Business & IT Building (BIT) Mezzanine, where students from all faculties gathered to learn, connect, and explore the exciting future of FinTech.

Thank you once again to everyone who attended and contributed to making this event a success. It was inspiring to see such enthusiasm and collaboration across disciplines, and I look forward to seeing how Ontario Tech students continue to drive innovation in finance and technology.

On Friday, October 17th, 2025, High Schoolers from J. Clarke Richardson Collegiate, Maxwell Heights S.S., SATEC @ W.A. PORTER C.I. and Pickering High School came to Ontario Tech University to tour the Software and Informatics Research Centre (SIRC) as well as compete in our annual High School CTF, courtesy of the Faculty of Business and IT as well as Sunlife Financial.

Students competed within their respective High School for first place, solving challenges from various categories such as Software Forensics, Trivia, Encoding, Cryptography, Subnetting, Programming, Linux, Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), and AI/LLM Challenges.

Congratulations to the top teams of HARE, Shahtism and OWAAS W SPEED for ranking first, second and third respectively.