Michael Halas

DHS Office of the General Counsel

Mike is an attorney-advisor in the Office of the General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), focusing on cybersecurity and infrastructure protection. He provides legal counsel to DHS headquarters and DHS’s National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, a 24x7 cyber situational awareness, incident response, and management center that works with both government and private entities. Mike provides daily operational support on incident response, risk assessment, information sharing, federal cybersecurity, and other cybersecurity activities; negotiates complex technology agreements; advocates the department’s positions; and drafts and negotiates legislation. Before his current position, Mike was an attorney-advisor in the DHS Honors Attorney Program, where he rotated through the legal offices of the Secret Service, DHS headquarters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Customs and Border Protection. Before joining DHS, he was a judicial law clerk for United States District Judge Eric N. Vitaliano of the Eastern District of New York, a judicial law clerk for Justice Carolyn Berger of the Delaware Supreme Court, a patent agent and technology specialist at WilmerHale LLC, and an engineer at IBM. He holds a J.D. from the Fordham University School of Law and a B.S. in electrical and computer engineering from the Rutgers University School of Engineering and is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional.