Threat Hunting and Basic Forensics
Joe Schumacher
Cisco Talos Incident Response (CTIR)
Joe Schumacher is a Cisco Talos Incident Response Incident Commander with a bit over 20 years of delivery experience in Information and Cyber Security. The Incident Commander position within Talos Incident Response provides the ability to immediately help our retainer customers with active security incidents with a team of Emergency Response professionals, which focuses on assisting customers with detection and analysis, containment, and eradication of cyber security threats. When off on-call rotation, Joe tends to focus his delivery to the Cisco Talos Incident Response Threat Hunting and Compromised Assessment services as well as attempting to contribute to internal continuous improvement teams and follow interests within the vast field of cyber security.
Joe Marshall
Cisco Talos Incident Response (CTIR)
Incident Response Training for Cyber Events
Travis King
Meridian
Travis King has 16 years of experience in the cybersecurity space and holds multiple certifications, including CompTIA A+/Net+/Sec+ and GIAC GCIA. Travis joined Meridian Cooperative in 2018, where he is now Director of Security Operations. As manager of Meridian’s Security Operations Center, Travis has been instrumental in architecting and implementing Meridian’s MSS 2.0 SIEM-solution, which provides co-ops with network environmental awareness and insight to detect, prevent and remediate cybersecurity risks to their IT/OT operations.
EV Integration Utilizing Distribution Systems Best Practices and Modelling
Sean Middleton
Director, Strategy Operations, Finley
Sean joined Finley in 2019 as Director, Strategy Operations. As an accomplished Professional Engineer, he brings more than 25 years of experience to Finley. Sean will use his areas of expertise in electrical engineering, distribution system operations management, and design and maintenance of electrical systems, and consult with Finley energy clients on many of today’s regulatory and compliance issues. With his background in the development of broadband networks, he can also assist in helping energy and telecom clients in meeting RUS requirements and standards, staying up to date on legislative funding, provide project management support and techniques, wireless, FTTP and consult on smart grid initiatives.
Sean comes to Finley from Illinois Electric Cooperative where he served as Manager of Engineering and IT. He received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Bradley University and his MBA from the University of Illinois at Springfield. He is a member of the IEEE including the Power, Communication, and Photonic Societies and the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE). Middleton previously sat on the Cyber Security Member Advisory Group for the Cooperative Research Network (CRN/ NRECA) and serves on the State Board of Professional Engineers for the IL Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.
Dennis Wright, P.E.
Manager of Distribution Engineering, Finley Engineering
Dennis Wright, P.E., joined Finley Engineering’s Energy Division as a Distribution Engineering Manager in Overland Park, Kansas, location in the first half of 2020. Dennis came to Finley with more than 25 years of power experience most recently working as a Senior Application Engineering Manager for Battery Energy Storage Systems.
An experienced professional engineer and manager, Dennis is highly skilled and has extensive experience in High Voltage Substations, Protection & Controls, Substation Physicals, Battery Energy Storage Systems, Power Plants, Chemical Plants, Smart Grid, SCADA, Electric Power, and Electrical Wiring.
Mr. Wright has held a broad range of positions over the years working with power plant automation, industrial controls, high voltage utility substation projects up to 500kV, and substation automation. He is also experienced in electrical substation, power plant, and process plant equipment and system testing, checkout, and commissioning. He spent the first 10 years of his career working at one of North America’s largest chemical plants. During that time, Dennis branched into Power & Substations on a greenfield 138kV substation project followed immediately by turnkey design, construction, commissioning, and successful startup of a $70,000,000 High Impact Polystyrene (HIPS) Plant in 1998.
Greg Shirek, P.E.
Product Manager, Engineering Analysis, Milsoft
Greg Shirek received his B.S.E.E. from the University of Wisconsin-Platteville in 1999. He has broad experience in distribution system planning and protection, DER interconnection studies and.arc-flash analysis. He worked as a consultant for 10 years prior to joining Milsoft as a Support Engineer, and is currently the Product Manager for the Engineering Analysis product. Greg is a past Chair of the IEEE Distribution Analysis Subcommittee as well as the IEEE REPC, and also served on the 1584 Arc Flash Working Group. He is a registered professional engineer and a senior member of IEEE.
Travis Jones
Southeastern Illinois Electric Cooperative
SMART Things
Matthew E. Luallen
Lead Research Scientist for Education Translation, Information Trust Institute at the University of Illinois
Matthew E. Luallen is the Lead Research Scientist for Education Translation at the Information Trust Institute at the University of Illinois where he coordinates and conducts research that addresses securing the nation’s critical infrastructure. Luallen served as a Co-Founder of CYBATI, where he led the company in further developing and expanding training services to enhance the understanding of, and provide protection from, cyber-physical threats.. He also served as a Co-Founder of Dragos Security co-developing CyberLens™ for operational technology device and communications discovery and analysis. He was a Co-Founder of Encari, a NERC CIP cybersecurity consulting firm helping the US and Canadian power grid defend strategic assets from cyber-physical attacks. He was also an Information Security Network Engineer and Architect at Argonne National Laboratory.
MicroGrids: Solar Panels, Batteries, Flywheels and Smart Grid Technology
Kate Cummings
G&W Electric
Mitch Mossman is a Manager of Technical Solutions – Electric, at Sensus-USA. Mitch is an Electric Utility/AMI professional with 40+ years of industry experience and has held various roles including Account Management/Sales, Product Management, Project Management, Utility Metering, and AMR/AMI/Smart Grid Field Engineer.
Leveraging Your AMI Network
Mitch Mossman
Manager of Technical Solutions – Electric, Sensus-USA
Mitch Mossman is a Manager of Technical Solutions – Electric, at Sensus-USA. Mitch is an Electric Utility/AMI professional with 40+ years of industry experience and has held various roles including Account Management/Sales, Product Management, Project Management, Utility Metering, and AMR/AMI/Smart Grid Field Engineer.
Battery Storage
Taisha Bezzo
Lithion Tech
Steven Dickson
Lithion Tech
Ever Changing Landscape of Renewables
Steve Pascoe
Manager Business Development E&O, National Information Solutions Cooperative (NISC)
Steve Pascoe is an electrical engineer with over 20 years of utility experience. Steve is passionate about providing solutions that make utilities more efficient and provide the best possible end-user experience. Over his career, Steve has focused primarily on operational solutions in the areas of outage/distribution management, engineering analysis, mapping, AMI, and meter data management. His work experience has taken him to industry leading companies that focus on software, enterprise solutions, and grid management.
Legal & Government Relations Update
Nick Reitz
Vice President of Government Relations, AIEC
Nick Reitz is the Vice President of Government Relations for the Association of Illinois Electric Cooperatives (AIEC). Nick joined the AIEC in 2012 as Manager of Government Relations. Formerly, he served as Director of Legislative Affairs for the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity and Legislative Liaison for the Illinois Department of Agriculture. He received a B.A. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Fun fact, he was a Youth Day and Youth Tour participant in 1999 representing Egyptian Electric.
Craig Sondgeroth
General Counsel, AIEC
Craig Sondgeroth has been the General Counsel at AIEC since 2018. Prior to AIEC, Craig was General Counsel and Chief of Staff at the Illinois Department of Agriculture and prior to that was in private practice. Craig and his wife have a son and two daughters.
Changes in Underwriting Cyber Insurance
Chris Perrine
Member Service Manager, Federated
Chris Perrine hails from Aitkin, MN. Chris worked for an electric cooperative in MN for 25 years (Mille Lacs Energy, Aitkin, MN) prior to coming to Federated in 2018. As many cooperative employees, he served in many roles for the cooperative working from mowing the lawn to becoming Member Service Manager for his last few years there. Since joining Federated, Chris continues to work with great co-op folks and helps them out with anything insurance related.
Evolution of Electric Vehicle (EV) Charging
Ian McGill
ChargePoint
Matt Ayers
ChargePoint
Hyperconverged Infastructure
Nick Matheson
Scale Computing
Cybersecurity for your OT Environment
Michael Leitman
Director of System Optimization, Business & Technology Strategies department, NRECA
Michael Leitman is the Director of System Optimization with NRECA’s Business & Technology Strategies department. He performs data analysis and research of issues of importance to the association, electric cooperatives, and their communities, with particular focus on power supply, energy markets, demographics, and the rural economy. He is also the Project Manager for the DOE-funded RADWIND Project focusing on co-op and rural utility deployment of wind as a distributed resource, including as a hybrid with battery storage and other technologies.
Michael holds a Master’s degree in Public Policy & Public Administration from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and History from the College of Charleston.
Common Attack Vectors
Jawary Prieto
InfoSight
Cyber Made Easy: The Must Have Checklist for Utility Cybersecurity
Travis King
Meridian Cooperative
Utility Poles Can Be a Big Asset in the Fiber Broadband Era
Sean Middleton
Finley Engineering Company
As The Threat Landscape Changes, What Role Does the FBI Play in Cyber Attacks?
Justin Harris
Computer Scientist, Federal Bureau of Investigations
Justin Harris is a computer scientist for the Federal Bureau of Investigations where he has served for over 8 years. Formerly, Justin held various positions, including application developer and systems administrator. Justin has obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science from the University of Illinois Springfield and is currently finishing his dissertation for a second master’s degree in Information Security Engineering from SANS Technical Institute, expected in 2023. In addition, he has obtained several certifications including but not limited to CISSP, CEH, GREM (Reverse Engineering Malware), GCFA (Certified Forensic Analyst) and GCPM (Certified Project Manager).
Nathan Anderson
Systems Engineer, Scale Computing
Nathan came to Scale Computing in August of 2022. He has been in technology for 20+ years 12+ years working in pre-sales roles. These roles included multiple Software companies, Cloud Providers and all business verticals. Nathan is based in Indianapolis, IN.
Nolan Butler
Territory Sales Representative – North Central Region, Scale
Nolan Butler grew up in South Bend, IN (Home of the Fighting Irish) and graduated from Purdue University where he studied Business Management / Entrepreneurship with the ultimate goal of getting into the IT industry.
After moving to Indianapolis, IN (Scale Computing HQs) and working briefly as an intern/consultant for Techpoint Sales Bootcamp – a non-profit group focused on IT Sales placements – he finally found a home with Scale Computing, the leading industry experts in Hyperconvergence + Edge Computing.
Nolan has been with Scale 5 years now and oversees the Heartland Territory which includes Iowa, Illinois and Missouri.
Jeff Foley
Business Development Manager, Siemens Digital Industries
Jeff Foley has spent the last 24 years in the Operational Technology environment working on Cybersecurity and carrier grade communication networks. As the Business Development Manager at Siemens Digital Industries, Jeff helps drives the growth of Siemens RUGGEDCOM solutions and cybersecurity in Industrial Control System markets. He has contributed to the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence and has authored several Cybersecurity whitepapers focusing on Industrial Control Systems markets and standards-based requirements. Jeff is considered a Chief Technology Evangelist for cybersecurity.