Kinnaird Mcquade
Chief Security Architect at BeyondTrust
Virginia, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolKinnaird Mcquade is a Chief Security Architect with 11 years of experience building cloud-native security products and programs, currently shaping product and security strategy at BeyondTrust. He founded NightVision and served as CTO, architecting serverless and containerized platforms for enterprise web and API security, including a Smart Proxy for private network scanning used by major identity and financial firms. A practical hacker and engineer, he led cloud vulnerability management at Square and was a founding member of Salesforce’s REDSCAR team, where his open-source tools Cloudsplaining and Policy Sentry gained massive adoption across AWS users and infrastructure scanners. His contributions to high-profile OSS projects (Cloudsplaining, Policy Sentry, Parliament) focus on IAM least-privilege, automated policy analysis, and credential-exposure detection. Kinnaird combines hands-on coding and product shipping with customer-facing advisory work and conference speaking, and he brings a rare mix of offensive research, large-scale system design, and startup grit. A former music teacher turned security researcher, he still applies the same patience and mentorship to engineering teams and investors alike.
11 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
Associate of Science (A.S.) Computer Science, Associate of Science (A.S.) Computer Science at Northern Virginia Community CollegeMaster of Science (M.S.) Cybersecurity, Master of Science (M.S.) Cybersecurity at Marymount University
Github Skills (17)
python10
it-security10
audit10
security10
aws10
code-auditing10
audit-logging10
auditing10
audit-trail10
testing9
data-analysis9
shell8
sh8
yaml8
script8
Programming languages (16)
Github contributions (5)
salesforce/policy_sentry
Oct 2019 - Jan 2023
IAM Least Privilege Policy Generator
Role in this project:
Backend Developer & Security Engineer
Backend Developer & Security EngineerContributions:52 releases, 29 reviews, 649 commits in 3 years 3 months
Contributions summary:Kinnaird's commits focus on enhancing the security and functionality of the Policy Sentry tool, specifically within the shared and shared/policy modules. They implemented features to analyze remote policies, including downloading and processing them. The user also added functions to improve the validation of template files, specifically addressing issues related to resource constraints and exclusion of actions.
policycloudsecurityiam-policyleast-privilegesecurity
salesforce/cloudsplaining
Apr 2020 - Aug 2022
Cloudsplaining is an AWS IAM Security Assessment tool that identifies violations of least privilege and generates a risk-prioritized report.
Role in this project:Full-stack & Security Engineer
Full-stack & Security EngineerContributions:31 releases, 20 reviews, 250 commits in 2 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Kinnaird primarily contributed to the development and improvement of the `salesforce/cloudsplaining` project. They implemented various fixes, including resolving integration tests, correcting installation instructions, and addressing issues related to the Travis CI environment. Moreover, they focused on enhancing the functionality of the reporting capabilities by adding functionality related to data visualization of credentials exposure and service wildcard usage. The user also worked on code enhancements that improved the tool's security posture.
least-privilegeviolationssecurityriskprivilege
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