About Donegal Studio

A studio built around things worth keeping.

Donegal Studio develops original intellectual property across stories, technology, media and education — with a bias toward ownership, durability and human judgment.

Why a studio?Meet the founder

Why a studio?

Because the work does not fit neatly inside one category. A book can become a film. A real place can become part of a story world. AI can support creation, operations, research and secure systems without becoming the point of the story. Education can extend an idea beyond entertainment.

It also reflects the person who founded it. William Ochs has worked as an educator, a programmer, a security leader and an author, and Donegal is built so those disciplines inform one another instead of competing for his attention.

Donegal Studio exists to let those pieces strengthen one another while keeping the underlying intellectual property, source material, audience relationships and technology under coherent ownership.

What the work draws on

The studio draws on its founder’s career. William Ochs was most recently Head of Cloud Compliance for Cisco Europe, built Cisco’s U.S. federal readiness baseline and continuous monitoring program, and serves as a committee member on CEN/CENELEC JTC 13. None of it is claimed as a credential of any Donegal product.

William Ochs speaking at a cybersecurity standards conference

Donegal Studio was founded by William Ochs. At Cisco, he opened access to a federal market worth billions and led the IOS XE security overhaul that moved a core networking and SD-WAN platform from a high-risk posture to a hardened, low-risk one. William has worked across nearly 20 successful FedRAMP Moderate and High authorization efforts. He pioneered Cisco’s cloud-compliance work across Europe, co-chaired CSP CERT, serves on the EUCS AHWG, and contributes to CEN-CENELEC standards for a member state. He has also taught cybersecurity as a professor for six years. That experience informs Donegal’s technology and advisory work; his novels and publishing program are the studio’s other defining pursuit.

Meet the founder

What we are building now

Donegal Publishing now has two distinct shelves. Storybooks contains illustrated family read-alouds for ages five through eight. Donegal Novels contains proper, full-length fiction for readers ages nine through adult—beginning with the first two books of The Finn Dynasty.

Donegal Readiness is an evidence-driven cybersecurity product that turns regulatory requirements into an explainable view of maturity, readiness and risk. It draws on the experience of Donegal’s founder, who built Cisco’s U.S. federal readiness baseline and continuous monitoring program and has worked across federal and international security frameworks. That experience is his; the product is in development and does not yet cover every framework.

Donegal Labs is the technology-side membership: access priority, feedback proximity and preferred launch-pricing eligibility. No Donegal product has reached general availability yet, and a Labs membership is not a software licence.

Donegal Advisory is bounded senior judgment and a separate service, not a membership: Private Strategic Advisory on one defined topic, and Board Advisory for boards.

Alongside these products, Donegal Studio develops applied AI and secure-systems intellectual property—including patent-pending AI work by its founder.

What Donegal Studio is not

  • Not a generic AI agency wearing a futuristic theme.
  • Not a one-book vanity imprint.
  • Not a content farm built around rented audiences.
  • Not technology for technology's sake.
The principle

Whether it is a story, a system or a piece of advice, make it clear, make it honest, and make it worth keeping.