Dr. O'Brien has significant expertise in a wide range of computer security and survivability areas and has a long track record of successful programs as Principal Investigator or Program Manager (PI/PM). He is currently
the PM/PI of Adventium's EFW/VPG project for DHS, which is implementing virtual private groups in an embedded firewall, and was involved in integrating he EFW distributed firewall into the LOGIIC demo and testbed that was developed as a joint undertaking between DHS and the Oil and Gas industry. He recently led Adventium's participation on DARPA's OASIS Dem/Val program.
Prior to coming to Adventium Labs, Dr. O'Brien worked for 16 years at Secure Computing Corp. While there he was the PI/PM for Secure Computing's portion of the Phase 1 OASIS Dem/Val program and for their Intrusion Tolerant Server Infrastructure (ITSI) program for DARPA. The former program developed a survivable architecture for the Joint Batttlespace Infosphere(JBI). SCC's work was transferred to Adventium Labs, where the Phase 2 implementation effort included integrating ADF and VPGs into the survivable JBI. The ITSI program developed a survivable web server that used network layer controls (a modified ADF) to continue to operate even when under network attack. Prior to that, he was the PM for the Releasable Data Product Framework program, under which the Autonomic Distributed Firewall (ADF) was conceived and initially developed and the PI/PM for SCC's Information Assurance (IA) program for DARPA. On the IA program he oversaw the development of a variety of security technologies including the Napoleon policy management tool, the Checkmate system security modeling tool, a single sign-on web plug-in, and CORBA and DCOM security enhancements. He has also had significant experience in application security, as the Principal Investigator on DARPA's Kernel Hypervisor program and the Program Manager for AFRL's Kernel Loadable Wrappers program, and in system validation, as a lead on the A1 verification effort for the NSA-sponsored LOCK platform.
After completing his Ph.D., Dr. O'Brien was a Post Doctoral Fellow at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia for three years. He then was an Associate Professor at Northern Kentucky University, where he taught Mathematics and Computer Science for nine years, before joining Secure Computing.
Education
- Ph.D. Mathematics, Queen's Univ, Kingston, Ontario
- M.S. Computer Science, Wright State University
- B.A. Mathematics, Univ. of Minnesota
Contact Information:
Richard O'Brien, Ph. D.
Member, Technical Staff
richard dot obrien at adventiumlabs dot org
612.387.5644