About
Kenneth Kasuba
Director of Security & AI Research — Tyrian Institute of AI and Cybersecurity
Honolulu, HI · Available Remote
Principal-level security leader with 15+ years across application security, penetration testing, cloud infrastructure, and AI/ML system defense. Author of AI Purple Ops—an open-source, research-grade LLM security testing framework with 200+ adversarial test cases—and STRATA-8, a novel bottom-up discovery framework for AI agent security published in Towards AI.
Architected secure-by-design patterns for enterprise agentic AI deployments and defined AI governance strategy for organizations adopting LLM-based systems. Led red teaming engagements that bypassed production LLM safety controls. Published two original AI security frameworks. Three-time promotion track to Principal reporting directly to CTO. Background spans NCC Group, Leviathan Security Group, and Certus Cybersecurity.
Career Highlights
- Built AI Purple Ops — an open-source, research-grade LLM security testing framework with 200+ adversarial test cases spanning prompt injection, data poisoning, GCG suffixes, encoding bypasses, Unicode smuggling, and RAG poisoning. Used by security teams for repeatable, evidence-backed AI assessments.
- Published STRATA-8 in Towards AI — a novel bottom-up discovery framework for AI agent security that fills the gap between traditional threat models (STRIDE, MAESTRO, MITRE ATLAS) and real-world agentic AI deployments. Adopted as a practical methodology for mapping trust boundaries and privilege drift.
- Bypassed production LLM safety controls during red teaming engagements at Certus — demonstrated training-data poisoning chains, unauthorized code execution, and canary validation bypasses via direct API manipulation; drove remediation across model-serving and API gateway infrastructure.
- Discovered critical vulnerability chains at NCC Group — IDOR exposing hundreds of clients' financial records, XXE-to-SSRF chains yielding full backend access and session token exfiltration, and JWT key-confusion attacks (RS256→HS256) that triggered complete authentication architecture redesigns.
- Promoted three times in under three years at Certus Cybersecurity — Security Engineer → Senior → Principal — earning a direct reporting line to the CTO and ownership of the company's AI security and DevSecOps practice areas.
- Led SOC 2, ISO 27001, and FedRAMP readiness across production environments; conducted FedRAMP-aligned reviews of AWS and Azure infrastructure that achieved full compliance posture.
Professional Experience
Tyrian Institute of AI and Cybersecurity
Director of Security & AI Research
- Direct the institute's security research program and cross-functional client delivery pipeline—from executive risk framing through technical validation to board-ready reporting
- Architect cloud-native research infrastructure on AWS with identity segmentation, hardened CI/CD, isolated attack simulation environments, and tamper-evident evidence workflows
- Define AI governance strategy and operationalize security architecture reviews for organizations deploying LLM-based systems, agentic AI workflows, and RAG pipelines—aligned with NIST AI RMF and OWASP LLM Top 10
- Establish institute-wide standards for research integrity, responsible disclosure, and evidence handling aligned with enterprise procurement and audit expectations
Certus Cybersecurity
3 years 10 months
Principal Security Engineer
Security Engineer → Senior Security Engineer → Principal Security Engineer · Direct report to CTO
- Defined secure-by-design architecture for agentic AI and GenAI systems—model governance, MLOps pipeline controls, and threat models hardening LLM integrations against prompt injection, data poisoning, and code execution
- Led AI red teaming engagements that bypassed LLM canary validations and demonstrated training-data poisoning; drove remediation across model-serving and API gateway layers
- Delivered OWASP Top 10, OWASP LLM Top 10, and ML pipeline application security assessments across enterprise web apps and APIs—XSS, CSRF, SSRF, IDOR, XXE, JWT flaws
- Authored custom Semgrep rules, SCA scans, and SBOM generation to embed shift-left security into CI/CD; integrated DAST, SAST, and IAST into GitHub Actions and GitLab CI
- Hardened AWS/GCP IAM and IaC—enforced least-privilege roles, scanned Terraform/CloudFormation templates, eliminated over-permissive policies
- Secured Kubernetes (EKS)—remediated misconfigured initContainers, enforced Pod Security Standards, tightened OPA/Gatekeeper and RBAC to close RCE and privilege-escalation paths
- Led SOC 2, ISO 27001, and FedRAMP readiness; advised on GDPR, NIST 800-53, and HIPAA control families
Senior Security Engineer
Security Engineer
NCC Group North America
1 year 2 months
Security Consultant
Promoted within 5 months · Recognized by Regional VP for exceptional deliverables
- Exposed IDOR in a GraphQL billing API—exfiltrated two years of financial records for hundreds of clients; drove object-level authorization across all endpoints
- Chained XXE + SSRF to reach internal metadata services, harvest session tokens, and demonstrate full backend compromise
- Executed JWT key-confusion attack (RS256→HS256) to forge admin tokens; triggered complete auth architecture redesign
- Conducted FedRAMP-aligned AWS/Azure reviews—identified public S3 buckets, wildcard IAM, absent CloudTrail; remediated to full compliance
- Automated recon with Nmap, Wireshark, and custom Python tooling—cut manual testing time 50%
Associate Security Consultant
Leviathan Security Group
Associate Security Consultant
- Performed web application penetration tests—CSRF, XSS, SQLi, XXE, insecure file uploads—and source code reviews for OAuth2/JWT flaws, hardcoded secrets, and CORS misconfigurations
PC Doctors Inc.
IT Security Consultant
- Delivered infrastructure assessments for law firms and healthcare providers—Nessus scanning, network topology mapping, AWS cloud migrations
Web.com
Technical Service Engineer
- Triaged production PHP/MySQL incidents, performed malware remediation on compromised web servers, administered Linux/Windows virtual infrastructure
PC Doctors Inc.
Technical Manager
- Managed security and network engineering team—infrastructure audits, VPN deployments, security appliance installations, chain-of-custody protocols; promoted to supervisor within two years
Certifications
Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)
ISC2 · Issued 2020 · ID 633076
AWS Certified DevOps Engineer — Professional (DOP-C01/C02)
Amazon Web Services · Issued 2022 · ID YXM6W1F19BFQQYW8
Core Competencies
AI & ML Security
AI/ML Security Architecture, LLM Red Teaming & Adversarial Simulation, Agentic AI Threat Modeling, AI Governance & Risk Assessment, Prompt Injection & Data Poisoning Defense, OWASP LLM Top 10, MITRE ATLAS, NIST AI RMF
Offensive Security
Penetration Testing (Web, API, Network, Cloud), Application Security (AppSec), Vulnerability Management, OWASP Top 10, MITRE ATT&CK
Cloud & Infrastructure
Cloud Security Architecture (AWS, GCP, Azure), Zero Trust Architecture, Kubernetes & Container Hardening
DevSecOps & AppSec
DevSecOps & Secure SDLC, SAST / DAST / IAST / SCA, Security Program Management
Compliance & Governance
SOC 2 / ISO 27001 / FedRAMP / NIST 800-53, NIST AI RMF
Leadership
Cross-Functional Leadership, Executive & Board-Level Reporting
Let's Build Something Secure
Need AI red teaming, agentic system security assessments, or a security leader who speaks both MITRE ATLAS and board-level risk? Let's talk.