OWASP Ottawa
Hello Ottawa and the World, Welcome to your OWASP Ottawa Chapter!
Who We Are
We are a place to meet local developers and information security professionals, share ideas, and learn.
You will find us informal, approachable, and thankful for your assistance. We encourage and welcome beginners. We are an open, tolerant, and inclusive organisation that accepts all races, genders, creeds, abilities, things, and ideas with the exception of one - Hate: Hate has no home at OWASP Ottawa.
OWASP Ottawa events are completely free. We will never charge for access to any of our events.
What We Do
We provide a mix of InfoSec talks, hands on training sessions, and special interest discussion groups. We hold monthly meetups at the STEM Building of the University of Ottawa. We hold occassional workshops on a variety of security topics.
We are always looking for new ideas for events so let us know if you have an idea.
You can submit an idea at any point in time at the following link:
OWASP Ottawa Speaker Submission Form 2024.
For updates, events, membership; please visit our meetup page: OWASP Ottawa Meetup
Volunteers
OWASP Ottawa would not function without the generous support of time and effort from our volunteers. If you would like to get more involved we would love to have your help.
Contact us on any of our socials or Slack if you wish to volunteer.
Chapter Supporters
Currently Scheduled Events
Connect with us on Social Media and on Slack
- Register for OWASP Ottawa Slack via this Slack link
- Follow us on Twitter: @OWASP_Ottawa
- Follow us on Mastodon: @[email protected]
- Follow us on Bluesky: @owaspottawa.bsky.social
- Follow us on LinkedIn: OWASP Ottawa LinkedIN page
Watch our past Talks
Next Meeting/Event(s)
OWASP Ottawa Chapter upcoming events can be found on Meetup:
https://www.meetup.com/OWASP-Ottawa/
Wednesday August 20th, 2025
Details
Welcome to our in-Person Meetup at the University of Ottawa
In-Person Location: 150 Louis-Pasteur Private, Ottawa, University of Ottawa Room 117
We will continue to Live Stream on our YouTube channel. (https://www.youtube.com/@OWASP_Ottawa). Subscribe to our YouTube channel, set a reminder and you’ll get a notification as soon as we go live!
YouTube Live Stream Link: TBA
6:00 PM EST Arrival, setup, mingle, PIZZA!!! 6:30 PM EST Technical Talks
- Introduction to OWASP Ottawa, Public Announcements.
- “Doing More with Less: An Adaptive, Label-Efficient Approach to Fraud Detection from Day One” with Bahar Afshar
- “Beyond APIs: MCP Security for AI Integrations” with Harsh Makwana
Abstracts:
Doing More with Less: An Adaptive, Label-Efficient Approach to Fraud Detection from Day One with Bahar Afshar Detecting fraud in financial systems is like finding a needle in a haystack; fraudulent transactions are rare, labeling them is expensive, and sometimes, we don’t have any labels at all. In this talk, I’ll present a new approach that tackles these challenges by combining different learning strategies in an adaptive way. We’ll explore how to start detecting fraud even when labeled examples are extremely limited and how we can prioritize the most suspicious cases using smart, explainable tools. The goal is to make fraud detection not just more accurate but also more efficient and easier to understand for human experts. Whether you’re working in cybersecurity, finance, or just curious about the future of AI-powered decision-making, this talk will offer insights into how we can do more with less when fighting financial crime.
Beyond APIs: MCP Security for AI Integrations with Harsh Makwana.* The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is rapidly becoming the standard for LLM integration with external tools and data. However, this accelerated adoption has often sidelined crucial security hardening. This talk will directly address the inherent security challenges within MCP implementations, providing essential strategies to build robust, secure AI agents.
Speakers:
Bahar Emami Afshar is in the process of completing their Master’s in Computer Science at the University of Ottawa, specializing in AI. During this time they worked under the supervision of Dr. Paula Branco and completed a research internship at H3M Analytics Inc. Their research focuses on explainable AI, anomaly detection, and label-efficient learning, with a particular emphasis on fraud detection and financial crime. Over the past year, Bahar has published several first-author papers exploring adaptive and efficient strategies for detecting fraud in low-label and imbalanced scenarios. Bahar is passionate about building intelligent systems that are more transparent, trustworthy, and impactful in real-world settings.
Harsh Makwana, M.Eng, is an Application Security Consultant at Software Secured with over 3 years of experience in penetration testing. An alumnus of the University of Ottawa, Harsh is a general technologist with a strong interest in the advancements of both cybersecurity and industrial robotics. Outside of work, he enjoys exploring photography and illustration as creative pursuits.
If you are coming into town by car to attend a meetup then you may have questions about parking. Below is a Ottawa University Campus parking map:
Alternatively, you can try your luck on street parking in Sandy Hill or in the Triangle on the other side of the canal (you can cross over using the Corkstown pedestrian bridge).
Even better, use the train as there is a station on campus.
Chapter Supporters
The following are the list of organizations that have generously supported the Ottawa Chapter:
How to Support OWASP Ottawa
Financially
Specifying OWASP Ottawa in your donation helps support OWASP and the Ottawa Chapter to provide quality security education.
- Browse to https://owasp.org/ottawa
- Click the green Donate button to the top right.
- Select an amount.
- Click “Publicly list me as a support of OWASP Ottawa”.
- Enter your details.
- Prove to a robot, that you are not a robot.
- Provide payment information.
Other ways to Support OWASP Ottawa
There are other ways you can support the chapter. These can include:
- SWAG.
- Food or Beverages at events.
- Security content.
Contact us for more details.