Sean O'Brien

Sean O'Brien is a cybersecurity and privacy leader with two decades of experience in organizational security and executive teaching. He is an Associate Research Scholar at Yale Law School and Program Director of the Cybersecurity and Computer Science Programs, as well as Assistant Professor, at Bay Path University. Sean is the founder of Yale Privacy Lab and teaches courses on cybersecurity, blockchain, and artificial intelligence at Yale.

Sean's approach to information technology is backed by deep experience with sensitive systems such as student records, legal databases, and encrypted email infrastructure. He is the creator of the zero-knowledge collaboration platform PrivacySafe and has held leadership positions at global security-focused firms including ExpressVPN. His work spans secure app and infrastructure deployment, bug bounty and VDP management, IAM administration, and endpoint management of cryptocurrency assets.

Sean's hands-on technical background is complemented by his work with legal teams, risk managers, and compliance officers across the public and private sectors. He is a lifelong educator, delivering remote classes to large cohorts of students and professionals before joining Tulane University. Sean has successfully delivered curriculum across a wide variety of areas in IT, from the Hacking and Cybersecurity program at the Lawfare Institute to the Cybersecurity for Business Leaders program at the University of Oxford, the AI and Business Law classes at Campus.edu, and the AI Risk Management workshops at Ivy Cyber Academy.

Sean honed his skills in data science, threat research, and cloud computing through leadership roles at privacy-focused blockchain firms including Tari Labs. As an active CISSP at ISC2 and a member of IEEE SA Open, Sean continues to bridge technical fluency with legal and regulatory insight, actively contributing to standardization and open source communities. His technical work emphasizes penetration testing and software supply chain with special attention to privacy law, global compliance frameworks, and the practical challenges of our connected world.

X: twitter.com/profdiggity 
Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/profdiggity.com 
Mastodon: privacysafe.social/@profdiggity 
Website: ivycyber.consulting 
Yale: privacylab.yale.edu 
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