Senior Policy Analyst
mblock@law.umaryland.edu 

Michael Block joined CHHS in April 2021 and is currently supporting the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC Water) with their emergency preparedness and response plans. Michael is also helping Anne Arundel County with their cybersecurity resiliency plan and is a member of the National Capitol Region (NCR) Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (THIRA) team. Previously, Michael supported the Charles County Department of Emergency Services with their NCR regional preparedness initiatives.

In addition to his responsibilities with CHHS, Michael is also the Cybersecurity Seat on the Maryland 9-1-1 Board, and Chair of the Board’s Cybersecurity Subcommittee. The seventeen-member board acts a purse for Maryland counties who submit grant requests for improvements to their respective 9-1-1 call centers. Michael, in conjunction with his team, makes recommendations to the Board about cybersecurity best practices and standards to which contracting vendors should be beholden, then votes to approve or deny funding requests based on compliance with Board standards.

Prior to joining CHHS as a Policy Analyst, Michael was the Research Assistant for CHHS Cybersecurity Program Director Markus Rauschecker. As Director Rauschecker’s Research Assistant, Michael helped update and restructure the Law and Policy of Cybersecurity M.S.L. class. Michael also monitored, updated and supplemented, the Maryland Cybersecurity Council’s Critical Infrastructure Subcommittee’s small and medium sized business online resource repository. Other professional experience includes Environmental Coordinator for the AutoPlus-Pep Boys Icahn enterprise.

Michael received his B.S. in Political Science, with concentrations in Political Theory and International Relations, from Towson University in 2014, and received his M.S.L. in Cybersecurity Law from the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law in 2020. Upon completing his M.S.L. degree, Michael was inducted the UMB-UMBC chapter of the Phi Kappa Phi National Honors Society.