Michael Barker currently serves as Principal Research Faculty – Cybersecurity within the Manufacturing Extension Partnership area of the Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI²) at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He uses his more than 40 years of advanced technology experience to help small to medium-sized manufacturers achieve compliance with various governance, risk and compliance requirements, including working with the Defense Industrial Base on CMMC compliance. Until 2022, he was the first director of the TSYS Cybersecurity Center in the TSYS Department of Computer Science at Columbus State University. While there, he developed more than 39 cybersecurity-specific academic courses and three newly accredited degree programs, including a B.S. in Cybersecurity, a B.B.A. in Cybersecurity Management, and a rapid workforce development program that turns out cyber professionals for Fortune 100 and 500 companies in the Financial Technology space in approximately 12 months with intense hands-on experience and five industry-recognized certifications. This included the development of a student-run Security Operations Center and the state’s first cyber range. The cyber range is the same range used to train the Israeli Defense Force.

Before entering academia full-time in 2018, Barker was president of C4 Global, which he founded in 1995 to provide a variety of Information technology, governance, risk and compliance, cybersecurity, and digital forensic services to several industry verticals. He is a Georgia State licensed private investigator, and classroom and firearm instructor as well as a Police Officer Standards Training-certified instructor in digital forensics. He is considered an expert consultant and has testified in several cases involving digital forensics. He currently serves on the MEP NIST National Cybersecurity Steering Committee and Working Group.

Barker earned his Doctor of Science in Information Technology from Middle Georgia State University, a Master of Science in Information Security Management and a Graduate Certificate in Information Security Analysis from the University of Fairfax and a Bachelor in Nuclear Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He spent 18 years in the nuclear industry including serving as the startup and reactor engineer for Vogtle Nuclear Operating Plant Unit 1’s initial reactor core load and criticality, bringing it from zero to 100% commercial operating power. He holds a number of CompTIA industry certifications as well as the NSA NDSTISS 4011 – Information Systems Security Professional and NSA CNSSI 4012 – Senior Systems Manager certifications.