Research.
Applied research at the intersection of behavioral science, insider threat, and AI-driven security systems. WeanTech is the primary research vehicle.
Insider Threat: Behavioral Escalation & Moral Disengagement
Most insider threat programs focus on detection — catching someone in the act or after the fact. My research focus is earlier in the timeline: the psychological escalation patterns that precede a policy violation becoming an incident.
The theoretical grounding draws from Bandura's moral disengagement framework (how people rationalize harmful actions by neutralizing their own ethical constraints) and Agnew's General Strain Theory (how accumulated stressors translate into deviant behavior). Applied together, they provide a model for identifying behavioral precursors — not just indicators of compromise, but indicators of escalating rationalization.
The dissertation design is qualitative and mixed-methods, oriented toward understanding the lived experience of insiders before detection — not just their observable artifacts.
Bandura: Moral Disengagement
Bandura's model describes the cognitive mechanisms through which individuals disengage their own moral standards to enable harmful behavior — rationalization, displacement of responsibility, dehumanization of victims, and distortion of consequences.
In insider threat contexts, these mechanisms don't appear suddenly. They accumulate. The research question is whether behavioral signals of disengagement are detectable before the incident, and whether organizations can respond to those signals without triggering the very escalation they're trying to prevent.
Agnew: General Strain Theory
Agnew's General Strain Theory identifies the role of strain — blocked goals, negative stimuli, loss of valued assets — in producing negative emotional states that increase the likelihood of deviant coping behavior.
Applied to the insider threat problem: organizational strain (failed promotion, role conflict, perceived injustice) is often visible in the record before an incident. The question is whether security programs are looking at the right signals, or whether they're optimized for detection after behavioral escalation has already reached the critical threshold.
OctopusONN: Adaptive Neural Architecture
Parallel research track: developing OctopusONN, a biologically-inspired neural architecture modeled on the distributed nervous system of the octopus. Semi-autonomous modules using Closed-form Continuous-time (CfC) cells coordinate via event-driven signaling — designed for environments where centralized analysis is too slow or too fragile.
The security application: adaptive threat characterization under concept drift, where the threat landscape shifts faster than traditional models can be retrained.
PhD — Forensic Cyberpsychology
Currently pursuing a PhD in Forensic Cyberpsychology, grounding the applied research work in a formal academic framework. The program focus is the psychological dimension of cyber incidents — not just the technical forensics, but the behavioral and motivational architecture of the humans involved.
WeanTech serves as the applied research vehicle throughout the program, maintaining continuity between academic inquiry and operational implementation.
Research design notes
The dissertation work uses a qualitative and mixed-methods design — deliberate, given the subject matter. Behavioral escalation before an insider incident is not well-captured by quantitative indicators alone. The phenomenological dimension matters.
Data sources under consideration include interview-based research with security practitioners, organizational case analysis, and behavioral signal modeling against known incident timelines.