Collin Sweeney

Writing for cybersecurity, identity, and deep-tech founders.

About

I'm a cybersecurity startup CTO who writes long-form thought leadership for technical and non-technical readers. My day job has me communicating with investors, government reviewers, conference rooms, and social media users in effective and engaging ways. Your white papers, blog posts, product docs, video scripts, or executive ghostwriting will get the same treatment.

I work best in dense subject matter. I hold two U.S. patents, a master's in cybersecurity, and an astrophysics background.

Reach me at hi@collinsweeney.io.

Selected Work

The Password Is Dead; Long Live the Password

Long-form thought leadership for Intelligence Community News (2023).

A contrarian take on the industry-wide push to retire passwords. Argues that the password itself isn't the failure point — the symmetric authentication protocol underneath it is — and that asymmetric, zero-knowledge alternatives let us keep the usability of passwords while eliminating their structural weaknesses.

Refocusing the Zero Trust Conversation

Op-ed, originally syndicated through Intelligence Community News (2022).

Pushes back on the dominant narrative that Zero Trust is a product you can purchase. Reframes ZT as an architectural commitment, identifies vendor lock-in and tactical-edge neglect as the real obstacles, and argues authentication is the natural starting point for any migration.

Zero-Trust Architectures and the Tactical Domain

White paper for ZKX Solutions (2022).

Identifies a gap most ZT writing ignores: how the cloud-heavy, sensor-rich ZT model breaks down at the tactical military edge. Argues for a bottom-up approach to actualizing ZT and walks through the architectural implications.

A Zero-Knowledge Multi-Factor Authentication Framework for Actualizing the Federal Zero-Trust Enterprise

Master's capstone, M.S. Cybersecurity, Utica College (2021).

Proposes a universal authentication framework reconciling federal Zero Trust guidance (NIST SP 800-207) with cross-agency information-sharing initiatives, using the Feige-Fiat-Shamir variant of zero-knowledge proofs over a blockchain-backed credential repository. Foundation for the patents now held by ZKX Solutions.