Michael Collins

Bio

Dr. Michael Collins is a security researcher, currently Senior Computer Scientist at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute. Dr. Collins is shocked to realize he has two decades of experience in information security research, beginning at the Carnegie Mellon's CERT where he developed the SiLK tool suite, a high-speed NetFlow analysis capability which served as the backbone of the DoD CENTAUR and DHS EINSTEIN-1 capabilities. Following his time at CERT, Dr. Collins worked as Chief Scientist for Redjack, a network security company specializing in large-scale instrumentation and analysis.

A practitioner who focuses on bridging the gap between academic security, secure systems engineering and operations, he has led research on insider threat, game-theoretic security, moving target defense and software defined networking, as well as investigating several notable incidents. He is the author of the O'Reilly book "Network Security Through Data Analysis", and the report "Threat Hunting: A Guide to Proactive Network Defense", as well as multiple scientific papers and patents. Dr. Collins graduated with a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2008, he holds Master's and Bachelor's Degrees from the same institution. He has no sense of humor and always refers to himself in the third person.