Nick Ashley advises boards, CISOs, and operations leaders on cyber risk in environments where a wrong call has regulatory, operational, or mission consequences. His work is about decisions: what to address, in what order, and how to justify the investment to the people who control the budget.
His 24-year career spans combat deployments, U.S. Cyber Command, national-level red team and purple team operations, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Tier 1 critical infrastructure. That breadth produced a methodology that is rare: adversarial thinking, performance psychology, systems analysis, and regulatory expertise working as a single capability.
At MISO Energy, Nick built ATLAS, a proprietary enterprise risk framework now embedded in operational prioritisation processes across NERC CIP-regulated systems. He also developed Cyber Cognitive Threat Modelling (CCTM) and the Cognitive Kill Chain: frameworks that model how adversaries exploit human cognition, not just technical vulnerabilities. Both were refined across live Bastion engagements before operational deployment.
In the Army National Guard, Nick served for 19 years. His final role was Deputy Director, Defensive Cyber and Purple Operations, directing joint cyber simulation exercises aligned to state and national security priorities. As Senior Manager of Red Team Operations, he directed more than 100 cyber operations in a single 12-month period and built the first Cybersecurity and Information Assurance Manager position in unit history. As Senior Manager of Offensive Operations, he managed up to 120 personnel across global deployments and directed 300 personnel through red team and threat emulation pipelines.
He holds a Master of Science in Cyber Security Management from the University of Detroit Mercy, an Advanced Graduate Certificate in Performance Psychology from Grand Canyon University, and certifications including CISSP, OSWP, eJPT, and Qualified Counterintelligence Threat Analyst (Q|CTA). He is a graduate of the University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies Red Team Member Course , a selection-based programme. He holds an active security clearance.
Nick is the author of five published works, including the Mindset Engine series (applied performance psychology for high-pressure decision-making) and Cognitive Kill Chain: Shadow Directive, which documents the adversarial doctrine underlying the CCKC framework.
He founded Bastion Policy Partners in 2019 and is based in Evans, Georgia.