Kevin T. Geil
I'm a cybersecurity practitioner with 15+ years spanning offensive security, incident response, governance, risk, and compliance, and the organizational leadership that connects them. I hold the GIAC Security Expert (GSE) certification, one of the most rigorous credentials in the industry, along with the CISSP and a Master of Science in Information Security Engineering from the SANS Technology Institute.
My Background
For 13 years, I served as the first Information Security Officer for the New York State Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA) here in Lake Placid. Cybersecurity had received little attention there before, so I had the distinction of building the program from the ground up, often with very limited budget and staff, spanning user awareness training, compliance, systems design, policy development, security monitoring, and incident response.
In 2021, I left ORDA to join GreyCastle Security as an incident response specialist, in the middle of what I often call the "great ransomware tsunami" that began in 2020. I later moved into penetration testing as well. In 2024, GreyCastle was acquired by DeepSeas, and I took the opportunity to lead the combined penetration testing practice as Cybersecurity Services Manager, overseeing a 12-person team through April 2026, when I founded Placid Security.
My Values
Technical accuracy: I take great care and pride in producing evidence-based, accurate work.
Empathy: I'm intimately familiar with the struggles organizations face in securing their information assets. Building ORDA's program, working with ransomware victims, and helping more than 100 companies underpins my empathy and enthusiasm for tackling difficult security challenges alongside my customers.
Efficiency: Time is the most valuable thing we have. I hold my customers' and colleagues' time in the highest regard and always pursue the most efficient path to a solution.
Collaboration: Security and IT operations share three foundational principles: know what you have, know how it's configured, manage changes to those configurations. Organizations that recognize this build programs that are both more secure and easier to run. When Security and IT work in concert, organizations become more resilient, more efficient, and easier to defend. That collaboration is what Placid Security engagements build. For more on this, read my post here.