EnerNex announces cyber security staff additions to the Smart Grid Labs, Smart Grid Engineering team, supporting communications and information systems security.

EnerNex is boosting their cyber and physical security division to meet the industry’s need for energy infrastructure protection experts.

Louis Wilder, a senior consultant in energy systems security, has over 25 years of expertise and will help lead the division in vulnerability assessments and/or penetration testing. Prior to joining EnerNex, Louis served as principal investigator for cyber security research at Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL). In an earlier position at Los Alamos National Lab, he served as principal investigator developing models and simulations that analyze critical infrastructures for the intelligence community.

Previously, Russel Van Tuyl served as an I.T. Infrastructure Engineer at the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

At EnerNex both engineers are responsible for, but not limited to:

• carrying out vulnerability assessments and/or penetration testing in varied environments,
• offering remediation and mitigation for new and existing data security threats in an energy services environment,
• performing incident response and forensic analysis in a variety of different scenarios and environments,
• assisting our utility and equipment manufacturing clients stay up with the latest security threats and mitigation methodologies.

Erich Gunther, EnerNex chairman and chief technology officer, remarked: “The industry is facing a critical time as there are not enough technical professionals entering the cyber security field with electric power industry experience to meet the ever-growing demand. We see the need and adding Louis and Russel to our team brings an enormous amount of expertise and knowledge to our already robust team of cyber and physical security specialists.”