Michael (Mike) Harding
Litigation Consultant:
Underline indicates retaining party, * indicates testifying witness.
Pre-filing investigation – 06/2023-10/2023
Alleged unlawful surveillance
Mobile phone and computer forensic analysis, creation of secure communications channels using VPN and other security technologies
BagCam LLC v Ristich LLC* – 02/2023-09/2023
Breach of Contract
Internet of Things application source code, design, and product assessment
Pre-filing investigation – 01/2023-04/2023
Alleged communications compromise of devices
Mobile phone forensic analysis
Pre-filing investigation – 08/2022-08/2022
Alleged Breach of Contract
Forensic analysis of documents for authenticity and duplicates, electronic discovery compliance assessment and opinion
Elman v Wright State University – 01/2022-07/2022
Wrongful Termination
Assessment of Backup/Recovery policy relating to discovery
Business Backer LLC v Chick’s Prime Meat Market et al* – 02/2022-03/2022
Fraud
Forensic analysis of mobile phone
Tara Brown* v. KRW Plumbing, Inc., et al. – 09/2020-present
Wrongful Death
Mobile phone forensic analysis, device loss probability study
Hyde* v Alegre – 12/2018-03/2019
Breach of Contract
Forensic analysis of removable storage and email archives
Horenstein* v Hilgeman – 05/2018-08/2019
Intellectual Property Theft
Forensic analysis of computers, network gear, and office equipment
Sun Microsystems v Microsoft 06/1997-11/1998
Copyright Infringement
Source code analysis
Employment History:
Logical Solutions, Managing Member – 2016-present
Logical Solutions has two principal business activities:
Servlet.com – Business web/application development and hosting services
MikeHarding.me – Technical, expert witness services
Mr. Harding handles day-to-day tasks for each op-co and participates hands-on in the projects of each. For Servlet.com, he writes applications, designs web sites, and manages the data center and resources required to project those services into the client base. He personally performs the primary research, analysis, and writes the reports for every expert witness engagement. He engages other qualified professionals when a task or project exceeds his abilities or resources to satisfy the requirements.
crowd.vu, Founder – 2014
Unsatisfied with the mechanisms available to determine how many people passed by his retail shop at any given time, Mr. Harding created a system to count the unique id from each mobile phone in range at the store and record these signals in database. He then wrote a web-based application to visualize the collected data to be able to determine how many unique signal ids were within range in a given time period, if the ids were new or returning, how long the ids were in range, using the signal strength, determine if the ids entered the retail store or simply passed by. A set of collectors were installed on same street to enable data to be analyzed for the downtown area. The crowd.vu concept was acquired in 2014.
Chick Genes, Co-founder – 2014
Mr. Harding worked with a co-founder, a Ph.D. biologist, to create a product to serve the market for urban chicken farmers. Most municipalities allow small-scale chicken farming operations within city limits but do not allow roosters. Accurately determining the gender of a young chicken can be difficult and if a chick ends up being a rooster, it can be an expensive in both cost and emotional investment for the farmer. By taking a small sample from the chick, a feather or bit of shell, a process called polymerase chain reaction (PCR,) can create enough genetic material to determine the sex of the chick as well as genetic predispositions for disease alleviating the concern of accidentally adopting a rooster. Chick Genes was acquired in 2014.
Cisco Systems, Acting SVP Information Technology – 2012-2014
As Acting SVP in the Chief Technology Office, Mr. Harding was responsible for software engineering augmentation for the OpenStack cloud infrastructure program. He engaged universities like the University of Edinburgh, University College London, Xiamen University, Indian Institute of Technology, and Imperial College to engage 3rd year students to join the company for their year in industry in Silicon Valley before returning to finish their degrees. This not only augmented engineering capability for the project, but created a talent pipeline of new grads to join the company in the local country after completion of the degree. Under Mr. Harding’s leadership, the program grew from a pilot of 6 students in year 1 and had over 90 students in the 3rd year of operation. Over 60% of the participating population worked for Cisco after graduation.
Oddyssea, Founder – 2012-2016
Oddyssea was an interactive, hands-on retail and online operation focused on products at the intersection of science, art, and nature. Mr. Harding conceived of the concept, created the flagship store, and introduced dozens original products for sale. The store featured an activities garden complete with a pirate ship wreck and the Guinness World Record for World’s Largest Marble Run/Gravitam. Mr. Harding wrote the point-of-sale software and the security software which integrated the camera and alarm systems. Mr. Harding used software engineering concepts to rapidly conceive of new products, test them for market fit, and if appropriate introduce them into the marketplace. Oddyssea sales grew from zero in 2012 to over $500,000/year in 2016 when it was acquired.
Re.Vu, Co-founder – 2012
With two other co-founders, Mr. Harding formed Re.Vu, an online, visual resume company. The product allowed a person to use a set of web-based tools to design, maintain, and publish a rich personal profile inclusive of media like video, sound, and images. The product won the “59 days of Code” competition in California. In the first 3 months, the service grew to over 100,000 profiles and was acquired in 2012.
Juniper Networks, SVP Software Engineering – 2008-2012
At Juniper Networks, a Fortune 500 network equipment maker, Mr. Harding was the technical general manager responsible for the network management and developer tools / community. In his tenure, he catalyzed a move from traditional waterfall software development to Agile/Scrum leading to higher software delivery velocity and overall software quality. He led engineering, product management, and supporting functions in Silicon Valley, India, and China. Mr. Harding integrated the products in the portfolio from point solutions into a shared platform, Junos Space, common functions and APIs were shared across multiple application solutions from Juniper and third-parties. The combination of the platform and engineering practice changes resulted in better products and led revenue to grow from $8M to over $100M in Mike’s tenure.
Montara Energy Ventures, Founder – 2006-2008
Montara Energy Ventures was established to create a utility-scale electric generation utility with power generated using only renewable resources. Mr. Harding employed data mining techniques to identify optimal locations inside the continental United States finally targeting the Sou Hills region of Nevada, about 3 hours east of Reno, Nevada. He then secured an exclusive 10-year lease of over 5,000 acres of Federal lands in the target area. In partnership with a Ph.D. geologist, Mr. Harding used shallow temperature gradient surveys to identify the locations most likely to yield viable geothermal water/steam wells. A solar radiation survey showed the location to be viable for solar thermal harness and dual use between the geothermal and solar thermal sources to harvest/create steam to generate 40-60Mw of electricity. The ridge line on the western edge of the lease was analyzed and found to have the potential to host up to 50 large scale wind turbines. A shared substation and transmission infrastructure would be used to connect to a 550 kv transmission line ¼ mile from the south end of the lease. The project was acquired in 2008.
Sun Microsystems, VP Software Engineering – 2000-2006
In this role, Mr. Harding led a large, multi-disciplinary team located in 23 countries responsible for services automation, remote services, predictive analytics, education curriculum and delivery, and remote service delivery. He led the effort to create a shared, extensible, and open platform to host the collected service technologies and an application that underpinned a new risk-based pricing service offering. Under Mr. Harding’s leadership revenue grew from zero to over $16M in two years. The software driven, risk-based service offering ultimately became the underpinning technology of $2.4B/year of recurring revenue for Sun.
Sun Microsystems Director, Advanced Development – 1996-2000
Working in the Chief Technology Office, Mr. Harding was responsible for leading a software engineering team to rapidly produce prototypes in order to test new products and ideas in the marketplace. He was also responsible for evaluating other products and technologies from inside the company in SunLabs and in the broader start-up world for technology transfer into the mainline businesses for Sun. Mr. Harding then worked to acquire or invest in external projects or to help create the structure to allow for the internal project to secure investment and thrive as a product in the main businesses. In his tenure, over 3,000 projects were evaluated leading to 11 investments, 3 acquisitions, and 14 internal technology transfers. Additionally, Mike and his engineering team produced over 40 prototypes resulting in 2 technology transfers and 1 spinoff entity.
Servlet Inc., Co-Founder – 1994-1996
In partnership with a co-founder, Mr. Harding wrote a custom web server designed to use server-side Java programs to perform business logic. The software was also used as a firewall/proxy to enable connection sharing of expensive dedicated internet access. The external investors wished to pursue the firewall/proxy business opportunity which led to Mr. Harding’s departure from the company. The co-founder maintained the company which ultimately because an internet service provider and morphed into one of the operating companies that Mike runs presently.
Charles Schwab, Technical Lead Systems Engineering – 1993-1995
At the Electronic Brokerage, Mr. Harding led a small team of engineers to design, create, operate, and refine the security infrastructure for Schwab’s web trading product. The project was specified to be a limited release, no more than 25,000 users, with fast incremental improvements and a gradual expansion of the user base. Mike’s team designed the external interface security, the firewalls, load balancers, and connections into the core trading product in the trusted internal network. Upon release of the product, over 1 million users registered to use the web trading product and senior management decided to expand the limited release to include the entire set of interested users immediately. During Mr. Harding’s tenure, the security infrastructure scaled to enable this influx of users, 40x more than the design specification, securely and with no compromise of the core trading product.
East Bay Municipal Utility District, Senior Systems Engineer – 1991-1993
EBMUD, a joint powers agency, provides water and wastewater services to over 1.2 million rate payers in the eastern portion of the San Francisco Bay Area. Mr. Harding was responsible for the unix and networking infrastructure for the utility supporting the engineering, design, and operations functions. This was a private hybrid network combining wired and wireless technologies to connect over 10,000 measurement and control points in the service area, in the watershed/supply regions, and the pipeline /pump infrastructure. In addition to this primary responsibility, Mr. Harding was directed to securely connect the utility to the nascent internet. Mr. Harding created a custom firewall using a surplus Sun Microsystems workstation with two network interfaces and custom written software in C to accomplish this task.
US Department of Defense, Technology Specialist – 1989-1991
As a civilian employee of the Department of Defense, Mr. Harding was responsible for the operation and repair of various communications and signals electronic equipment. Having demonstrated an unusual aptitude with the gear, he became a primary resource across units and was deployed on countless tours of duty to maintain, repair, operate, and train personnel in situ. These deployments included time at sea, time in various military installations (domestic and foreign), and as part of Desert Shield and Desert Storm operations. During his tenure, Mike designed and created custom software and hardware tools to aid in the ongoing operation and maintenance of the equipment and software.
Job Journal, Founder – 1986-1989
Spurred by his own need to find gainful employment, Mr. Harding designed, created, and operated a private database connected to a dial-in bulletin board system called the Job Journal. The business maintained a pool of pre-screened, pre-qualified candidates for employment in the database and matched these candidates to job opportunities in the local region. The matched candidate lists were then marketed to businesses with the value proposition of increasing the velocity of hiring new staff while maintaining candidate quality. Mike wrote this software on the QNX operating system using the Zim database with the application coded in BASIC and C. The company was acquired in 1989.
Technologies:
Languages – Rust, GO, JavaScript, Java, Python, PHP, C, Objective C, Swift, COBOL, Ada, & C++
OS – Windows Desktop/Server, Linux (many variants), JunOS, Cisco IOS, Android, & iOS
Databases – Oracle, MySQL/MariaDB, MongoDB, & SQLServer
Webservers – Apache, nginx, & IIS
Infrastructure Software – Exim, sendmail, qmail, postfix, dovecot, phplist, WordPress, & many more
Tools – Puppet/Chef, Nagios, Various source code analysis, Ansible, & custom shell scripting
Virtualization – Open Stack, VMware Suite, Citrix Xen Suite, Virtual Box, ZFS, Docker, & Kubernetes
Cloud – AWS Suite, Google Cloud, & Azure
Applications – Various across healthcare, financial services, legal, and municipal verticals
Methodologies – Agile, Scrum, MVP, Lean, Kanban, Waterfall, & Six Sigma (DMAIC/DMADV)
Awards:
Star Award – Juniper Networks
Sun Leadership Award – Sun Microsystems
Customer Briefing Champion – Sun Microsystems
Chairman’s Award for Innovation – Charles Schwab & Company
Patents #7,200,636 for e-mail aggregation and proxy technology & #7,617,294 for web browsing acceleration technology
Guinness World Record Holder for “Largest Gravitam/Marble Run”
Education:
Lifelong learner & autodidact
Now Reading: The Origin of Consciousness by Julian Jaynes
Currently Studying: Quantum Computing Programming Models