Michelle Duell

Michelle Duell is an intelligence professional and SANS Cyber Academy Scholar, bringing a background in geospatial and all-source intelligence, operational targeting, and adversary TTP analysis into cybersecurity. Her interests center on threat intelligence, incident response, and detection engineering.

KC7 was Michelle's first experience in cybersecurity. She attended a KC7 workshop, worked through the challenge scenario, and found her drive and passion for cybersecurity there. Now she gives back to the platform as a volunteer, developing automation to support content and reviewing scenarios and datasets for technical accuracy.

Away from KC7, Michelle is a serious capture-the-flag competitor. She has earned first-place finishes across several WiCyS competitions, captained the winning team at the 2026 USCC East cyber camp, and took home a runner-up report award at the 2025 SANS Holiday Hack Challenge. She also speaks and writes about her work, presenting at the WiCyS National Conference on reverse engineering DNS exfiltration with Ghidra and publishing technical walkthroughs, projects, and security research at aerobytes.io.

Before cybersecurity, Michelle built a full career in music. She is a professional musician who holds several degrees in the field, and she carries the same discipline and curiosity from years of performance and teaching into the work she does now.