The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) announced yesterday that they had managed to lure Michael Assante away from Idaho National Labs. Assante was formerly CSO for American Power and American Electric Power prior to that.
From the press release:
In this newly created position, Assante will formally establish Critical Infrastructure Protection as one of NERC’s program functions, alongside its existing standards development, compliance and enforcement, and reliability assessment programs. Assante will also serve as the single point of contact for the industry, NERC’s Electric Sector Steering Group, and government stakeholders seeking to communicate with NERC on cyber and infrastructure security matters. Assante will officially begin at NERC on September 2.
NERC has made a positive move with Assante’s hiring. It is a touch disconcerting that NERC didn’t have a CSO function previously, when you consider their role:
Our mission is to ensure the reliability of the bulk power system in North America.
Hopefully, he will be able to drag pretenders to the throne kicking and screaming into the sunlight.
Congrats Michael!
(Thx to CJ for the heads up)