Michael J. Daugherty

Michael Daugherty is President & CEO of LabMD. He is an Atlanta-based clinical and anatomic medical laboratory with a national client base. LabMD specializes in the analysis and diagnosis of blood, urine, and tissue specimens for cancers, micro-organisms and tumor markers. Mike founded LabMD in 1996 after 14 years in surgical device sales with U.S. Surgical Corp. and Mentor Corporation.

However, Michael Daugherty has spent most of the last decade defending his company against charges that it had deficient cybersecurity practices. The early years of his entering and fighting in Washington, DC, are recorded in his book, “The Devil Inside the Beltway”.

In so doing, he has become the only litigant to challenge the basic authority that underlies more than 200 enforcement actions relating to cybersecurity and online privacy that the FTC has brought over the past 15 years. Every one of the 200+ litigants before him – including some of the largest companies in the world – have settled with the FTC, creating an unquestioned and untested belief that the FTC has broad authority to regulate in these areas.

Following oral arguments in June, 2017, before a panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, it seems entirely possible that he will prevail.
In so doing, he may well topple key pillars of the FTC’s cybersecurity and online privacy edifice, successfully exposing and challenging The Administrative State.