// about
Michael Kasede
Offensive Security · Red Teaming · Security Engineering
I'm a cybersecurity professional with 7+ years of experience across offensive security, detection and response, and security engineering in financial services and government environments. I combine an attacker's mindset with a defender's understanding to identify exploitable weaknesses, validate security controls, and help teams turn findings into practical risk reduction.
My work spans penetration testing, security operations, risk reduction, and hands-on infrastructure and automation projects. I'm particularly interested in adversary simulation, cloud-native security, DevSecOps, and using automation and AI to make security workflows more effective.
On this page
Career impact
84%
Reduction in risk exposure through security initiatives across eight African subsidiaries at Prudential.
52
Government agencies served by the centralized SOC established at NITA-U.
~70%
Reduction in reported cyber incidents across supported government agencies.
92%
Average compliance attestation across eight regulated financial-services entities.
Areas of expertise
Offensive Security & Adversary Simulation
- Internal & external penetration testing
- Active Directory security assessments
- Web application security testing
- Red-team & purple-team exercises
- Attack-path analysis & adversary emulation
- MITRE ATT&CK-informed testing
Detection, Threat Hunting & Response
- SOC architecture & centralized logging
- Detection validation & control testing
- Security monitoring & endpoint telemetry
- Incident response & threat investigation
- Vulnerability management
- Threat intelligence enrichment
Cloud, Infrastructure & DevSecOps
- Cloud & infrastructure security
- Containerized application deployments
- Infrastructure as Code
- CI/CD security testing
- Configuration hardening
- GitOps & repeatable deployments
Security Automation & Development
- Python & scripting for security tasks
- Workflow automation & tooling integration
- Automated security testing in CI/CD
- AI-assisted development & agent workflows
- Integration across APIs, apps & infrastructure
Security Engineering & Risk
- Identity & access management
- Vulnerability remediation & prioritization
- Security control validation
- Secure development lifecycle support
- Security risk assessment
- Compliance coordination & remediation tracking
Selected projects
Active Directory Adversary Simulation Lab
Home labA virtualized Active Directory lab built with GOAD, Ludus, and Proxmox to practice attack paths in a controlled environment, with Elastic Security used to explore detection and investigation.
Demonstrates: Active Directory security, adversary emulation, lab infrastructure, and the relationship between attack behavior and defensive telemetry.
View on GitHubCloud Red-Team Infrastructure Automation
Home labRepeatable, authorized deployment of red-team lab infrastructure using Terraform and Ansible across cloud providers, with containerized tooling and configuration driven entirely from code.
Demonstrates: Infrastructure as Code, multi-cloud deployment automation, containerization, and operational-security considerations.
View on GitHubCybernet Labs AI-Assisted Publishing Platform
LiveA portfolio and publishing platform that uses the Hermes AI agent and Python tooling for repeatable content workflows, with a Next.js frontend, Supabase backend, and GitOps deployments from a home lab.
Demonstrates: Application integration, AI-assisted automation, software development, and human review of AI-generated output.
Browse projectsEducation & certifications
M.S. in Cybersecurity
Drexel University
PNPT
Practical Network Penetration Tester
CompTIA CySA+
Cybersecurity Analyst
CCNA Security
Cisco
CCNA
Cisco
ITIL 4
Service management
Current focus
I'm continuing to deepen my experience in offensive security, cloud-native environments, security automation, and AI-assisted security workflows. I enjoy building labs and tools that let me test ideas, understand attack paths, and explore how security teams can detect and remediate weaknesses more efficiently.