Summary
Michael Smith is a Field CTO and cybersecurity executive with 25+ years of experience and a current focus on translating strategy into engineering and product outcomes across DNS, DDoS mitigation, WAF, bot management, CDN, API protection, and x509/TLS. Based in Greater Boston, he blends hands-on technical leadership with customer-facing roles—running POCs, technical marketing, and SOC training—to help large-scale platforms evolve threat intelligence and protective DNS services powered by AI/ML. His career spans founding and advising startups, leading regional security growth at Akamai, and building enterprise incident response and threat intelligence capabilities that supported global events and complex industries. Michael also mentors cybersecurity and IoT startups, teaches immersive DFIR/IoT bootcamps, and architects ML-driven systems to detect counterfeit and grey-market threats, showing a rare mix of product, operational, and enforcement experience. An Army National Guard veteran and polyglot in Russian, he combines disciplined operational leadership with deep technical specialization in internet-scale security.
11 years of coding experience
5 years of employment as a software developer
Advanced DoD Certificate Russian Language, Advanced DoD Certificate Russian Language at Defense Language Institute
BS Liberal Studies Concentration in Russian, BS Liberal Studies Concentration in Russian at Excelsior University
Russian