James O’Brien
OSWE, GWAPT
13 years focused on application security and secure software development. Has conducted assessments for web applications, mobile apps, and APIs across banking, e-commerce, and healthcare sectors.
James O’Brien is an application-security instructor at GICCT, focused on helping developers and security professionals find and fix the vulnerabilities that matter most in modern web applications and APIs. His work sits at the meeting point of secure development and offensive testing.
Background and expertise
His expertise centres on the OWASP Top 10, secure coding, security testing, and code review across modern web stacks and APIs. He has assessed and hardened applications for organisations ranging from startups to large enterprises, and has a deep understanding of how vulnerabilities are introduced, discovered, and remediated in real codebases.
Teaching approach
James teaches application security from both sides of the keyboard: students attack deliberately vulnerable applications, then learn to build defences against the very flaws they exploited. This dual perspective makes the lessons stick and transfer directly to real projects. He leads the Web Application Security (OWASP) program at GICCT.