Michael Sikorski is an industry expert in reverse engineering and published the book Practical Malware Analysis: The Hands-On Guide to Dissecting Malicious Software, which has had over 100,000 copies distributed, and teaches the tools and techniques used by professional analysts for malware analysis. He has over 20 years of experience working on high-profile incidents and leading research and development teams. He also teaches cybersecurity at Columbia University.  

Michael works across the Palo Alto Networks product portfolio to fuel intelligence, guide innovation, and increase collaboration. At Unit 42, he leads the engineering and product management teams to drive the future of threat intelligence, security consulting, and managed services.  

Prior to working at Unit 42, Michael worked at Mandiant as the vice president of Mandiant Advantage Labs and the FLARE team, where he led research and development, provided direction for a company platform, including threat intelligence, malware analysis, and validation products, and served as the technical lead on all external-facing firm releases. He also provided escalation support for incident response, red team engagements, engineering, marketing, and intelligence teams. Previously, as a senior director, Michael expanded his team to include full software development capabilities and built a cloud-based scalable and flexible platform for binary analysis.  

Michael also worked at the National Security Agency as a Network Vulnerability Engineer and managed a team of eight computer scientists in the development of the host-based component of an active network defense system. Michael led the team of analysts that found the SolarWinds backdoor and briefed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the U.S. Department of Defense after this discovery. He also contributed to the APT1 report.