ABOUT MIKE
Get to know the story behind the work.
Mike has built his career as both a practitioner and leading voice in OT/ICS cybersecurity. His work is grounded in real-world experience and a commitment to the community.
Awards & Recognition
2026
Community Champion/ Mentor of the Year
Critical Impact Awards
2025
Practitioner of the Year
ICS/OT Defender
SANS Difference Maker Awards
2026
Community Builder Award
Beer-ISAC
MIKE’S JOURNEY
The story behind Mike’s career in OT/ICS cybersecurity.
AN EARLY INTEREST IN CYBERSECURITY
Mike was eleven when he watched David Lightman hack NORAD in WarGames and got hooked on the possibilities behind a computer screen.
Not long after, he met his friend Chris, who was cracking games, writing cheat codes, and dialing into hacker bulletin board systems. Mike was the “good kid.” He left the hacking to Chris, but he couldn’t get enough of watching what Chris could do.
If someone with good intentions could do all of this, what could someone with bad intentions do?
It was a question that would eventually become a career. Mike spent more than 20 years in IT cybersecurity, focused on understanding the risks behind technology and how to protect against them.
THE MOVE INTO OT/ICS
Then Stuxnet hit the headlines.
Suddenly, the kind of scenario that had captured Mike’s imagination as a kid wasn’t confined to a movie.
Malicious code had crossed from the digital world into the physical one, with the ability to damage machinery while the systems operators relied on made everything appear normal.
For Mike, Stuxnet raised a whole new set of questions.
What did Stuxnet mean for other types of critical infrastructure? How did cybersecurity work in these environments? How were the systems protected? And where were they vulnerable?
Finding the questions was easy. Finding the answers was not.
There simply wasn’t much information out there. Mike reached out to people working in critical infrastructure, but those conversations were hard to come by. As he kept digging, he realized many of the environments he was asking about simply weren’t doing much about cybersecurity.
So Mike started putting the pieces together wherever he could. He connected with others in the community and eventually went to work for one of the world’s largest engineering companies, continuing to build his knowledge and experience in OT/ICS cybersecurity.
FROM LEARNING TO LEADING
Mike knew how frustrating it was to learn OT/ICS cybersecurity with so little information available. He didn’t think it should be that hard for the next person.
So he started sharing what he knew.
First on LinkedIn. Then on YouTube, making OT/ICS cybersecurity content freely available to anyone who wanted to learn, regardless of location or budget.
And people showed up.
What started as sharing information grew into a global community around practical OT/ICS cybersecurity knowledge.
Today, Mike remains active in OT/ICS cybersecurity, bringing that real-world experience to everything he does.
What began with Mike trying to understand how these environments were protected has grown into a career helping protect them, strengthen the field, and make OT/ICS cybersecurity knowledge more accessible to others.
CONSULTANT
Helping organizations create more secure OT/ICS environments.
EDUCATOR
Teaching OT/ICS cybersecurity with a focus on practical, real-world application.
CREATOR
Delivering content that makes OT/ICS cybersecurity topics clear and accessible.
MIKE’S MISSION
Protecting the systems people depend on.
When we understand how these systems work, we can protect them—and the people and communities that rely on them.
- MIKE
