Michael K. Hamilton

Mike Hamilton founded Critical Insight to provide security services to the organizations that matter at the scale we live our lives: local government, healthcare, critical manufacturing, et al.

After a career in the private sector culminating as the Managing Consultant for VeriSign Global Security, he moved into government roles as the CISO for the City of Seattle, Policy Adviser for Washington State, and the Vice-Chair of the DHS government coordinating council for state, local, Tribal, and territorial government.

Mike is frequently quoted about major cybersecurity issues in media such as The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and SC Magazine. He’s also an in-demand speaker, with the ability to talk to both InfoSec and general audiences about the past, present, and future of cybersecurity. Mike was voted CISO of the Year at the Global InfoSec Awards during the 2021 RSA Conference.

Mike also founded and serves as Chair for the PISCES project, which provides no-cost cyber monitoring for small local governments in return for using data collected as “live-fire” curriculum for 20 colleges and universities in the U.S. to train the next generation of cyber analysts.