Michael Toback has had an interesting career. He loves to learn and he wants to share what he knows with you.
He graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at the age of 20, then went on to Carnegie-Mellon University where he received dual Masters degrees in Electrical and Biomedical Engineering at the age of 22. He spent the first 6 years of his career as an engineer at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory working on various biomedical and energy related projects. Over the next 35 years, he worked for a variety of companies in roles as varied as digital signal processing engineer, managing the scrum server for a company with over 10,000 engineers, and writing patents for a startup team within the same company (will get to that later). He worked for a variety of companies along the way in varying domains including virtual computers, biomedical, finance, and government.
Somewhere along the way, he decided to get a law degree. He passed both the California Bar and USPTO Patent Bar, and practiced law. He did that for 12 years before he retired from law, with some time as a California family law attorney but mostly writing patents and trademarks for small companies. He also has about a half dozen patents of his own, one of which applies to cyber security workflows.
Before completely retiring from engineering, his manager asked him to become a cyber security analyst. He got his first certification in 6 months. He then spent three years as a solo cyber security analyst, helping the company create a plan to keep its’ website safe from hackers and bad actors. He retired in 2023 with a CySA+ certification and lots of knowledge to share!
We hope this blog will help others understand cyber security and maybe help launch your own careers in areas you never thought possible.
