Know Your Diamonds from Your Pencils: Talking All Things Physical Security with SERC’s Travis Moran
Curtis Marquardt Jr.: Can you tell our readers more about your background and what you do for SERC Reliability Corporation.? Travis Moran: I began my career in law enforcement, first as an analyst with Interpol. After several years, I joined the U.S. State Department as a special agent, where I served for six-and-a-half years. I […]
Substation Security Challenges: The Importance of the Critical Decision Making Process
The most commonly used decision-making process is conjecture-based; we use it countless times daily. We go through life making decisions based on assumptions, speculation and whimsy, with little thought to impact or outcomes. However, when it comes to security, especially substation security, our decisions have consequences. For these decisions, we need a better decision-making method. […]
Forging a Secure Tomorrow: Duke Energy’s Path to a More Resilient Future
There’s a great quote by Confucius that says: “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” And it’s truly applicable for security professionals because no matter how much one plans, strategizes and fully commits to preventing an incident, along comes something that challenges those efforts in ways that […]
How ‘Global Weirding’ is Creating New Threats for Utility Security Professionals
If you search for “Andrew Bochman” on Amazon’s website, the first listing to appear is a book he co-authored about countering cyber sabotage. If you search his name on YouTube, you’ll find videos of him presenting on topics including managing risk and operational technology cybersecurity. Bochman dedicated much of his career to helping with the […]
The Storm Work Security Conundrum
As storm restoration work becomes more frequent, so do the challenges of verifying that the workers that flock to the disaster areas are qualified to do the work as well as meet background checks and security verifications they need. We talked with Dan Stemp, the chief customer officer at JNCTN, a New Zealand-based company that […]
Perimeter Control as the First Line of Defense
For many utilities, physical security begins at the door or the parking lot. However, robust facility protection starts at the perimeter. But we often abandon this defense resource to aesthetics, budget restraints, or misplaced values. This makes a secure perimeter the least considered and most often overlooked element of facility security. However, resilient perimeter protection […]
GridEx VII Reveals Continuing Challenges of Post-Covid Hybrid Work, Communications and Technology
In November 2023, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) and its Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC) conducted the seventh biennial GridEx. “GridEx is one of the largest and most comprehensive security drawings that are done in any critical infrastructure sector,” said Manny Cancel, senior vice president and CEO of E-ISAC. “It has […]
Why Your Organization Needs to Conduct Exercises: Understanding the The Bottom-Line Impacts
We talk with Gary Bower, the Branch Chief of CISA’s Infrastructure Security Exercise Branch About the Many Layers of Value in Conducting Exercises
5 QUESTIONS WITH ELECTRICAL & COMPUTER ENGINEERING RESEARCHER AND EDUCATOR CHEE-WOOI TEN
We sat down with Chee-Wooi Ten, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Michigan Technological University. He spends his time researching actuarial science and risk profiling for the power infrastructure industry, linking cyber events with operational risk mitigation. During our discussion, Ten shared his insights about the risks of a cascading cyberattack and the […]