Government cyber
Former NSA Technical Director
Served in technical leadership roles supporting computer network operations and defensive security work.
Research and tools
Kevin O'Connor
Cybersecurity research, technical notes, and practical tools for AI security, threat research, and detection engineering.
Former NSA Technical Director with experience on CrowdStrike's Advanced Research team and in threat research leadership at Adlumin, now part of N-able. Current work centers on adversarial AI systems, detection engineering, and practical security tooling.
For retained advisory, expert review, and AI security assessments, start with TKOResearch.
Writing
Latest writing
September 9, 20265 min read
A Repeatable Threat-Hunting Exercise for Small Security Teams
A local identity hunt with synthetic records, executable SQL, negative cases, and explicit blind spots.
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September 9, 20265 min read
Choosing an AI Agent Memory Service: Security and Performance Tradeoffs
A memory-service decision method with a small local SQLite experiment, tenant checks, deletion limits, and latency measurements.
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September 9, 20264 min read
Evaluating Identity Detection Coverage Across MSP Tenants
A bounded Microsoft Entra evaluation method, with synthetic cases for correlation and tenant separation.
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In the media
Interviews and articles
SecurityWeek/Media profile
Hacker Conversations: Kevin O'Connor
A conversation about offensive and defensive cybersecurity work.
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Security Magazine/Article
Holiday weekend cyber threat preparation
How security teams can prepare for cyber threats over holiday weekends.
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CISO Tradecraft/Podcast recap
SMB CISO challenges
Security challenges for small and midsize businesses, including managed detection and response.
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BrightTALK/Event
Enabling Threat Detection and Response
On-demand talks on threat detection, security monitoring, and threat hunting.
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Background
Security research and engineering
Threat intelligence
CrowdStrike Advanced Research
Worked on threat intelligence and advanced security research.
Detection engineering
Adlumin / N-able threat research leadership
Led research into ransomware, intrusions, and detection methods.
Current work
Founder of TKOResearch
AI security research, assessments, and defensive tools.
AI security work
Agentic systems, adversarial testing, and security boundaries
Security tools and label builders
Security tools
Decode tokens, inspect indicators, calculate subnets, and check security headers.
AI Tree of Life
An interactive app for exploring AI systems, model families, and the relationships between them.
GHS label builder
Create chemical labels with GHS pictograms and hazard statements.
NFPA diamond builder
Create and print NFPA 704 fire diamonds.
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Occasional notes on AI security, threat research, and new tools.
Commercial work
Advisory and expert review
For board briefings, AI security assessments, expert review, or retained advisory work, start with TKOResearch.