Deep Future Securing Physical Infrastructure at Idaho National Labs – Wayne Austad
When I was at the Idaho National Labs, I got to meet Wayne Austad. We had a conversation about cybersecurity as it relates to physical infrastructure. People always wonder what if hackers shut down the power grid? They have shut down the power grid, in different parts of the world and we talked about that a little bit.
Wayne’s at the forefront of figuring out how do we secure this physical stuff? How do we secure the grid? How do we secure power stations? Nuclear reactors? How do we secure all the stuff that people rely on in daily life and just take for granted? This is the physical stuff, it can kill you. If something goes wrong, it can explode and be a terrible disaster. We really want to make sure that we have the best security we can for these things. Historically, it’s been challenging because a lot of the physical machinery and the control systems for it predate networks, predate the internet.
And so for a long time that stuff’s been vulnerable. And it’s so exciting to see the large-scale operation they have at the Idaho National Labs. They have a huge team working on this amazing stuff. I got to see simulators for historical attacks on infrastructure. You could actually go and play with these things. You can see a virus taking over a power plant and shutting it down. You can test interventions, you can really experience what it would have been like to be on the response team during these actual events. It’s really cool.
Wayne is the CTO of National and Homeland Security at the Idaho National Laboratory. He’s also the Chief R&D Officer for an operation called Cybersecurity Manufacturing Innovation Institute. Wayne has a lot of very forward-thinking ideas about applying state-of-the-art technology to this infrastructure that we rely on every day of our lives.
Wayne Austad Bio
Wayne Austad CTO, National & Homeland Security, Idaho National Laboratory Chief R&D Officer, Cybersecurity Manufacturing Innovation Institute (CyManII) Mr. Wayne Austad has worked at INL for 30 years with 21 years of experience building impactful national security programs. As CTO for National & Homeland Security he: 1) Provides leadership and strategy for the collaborative R&D, infrastructure, and partnerships; 2) Acts as Chief R&D Officer for CyManII, a DOE institute led by UTSA focused on pervasive cybersecurity in manufacturing automation and supply chain, and sponsor of new MFG-ISAC; 3) Leads the Secure & Resilient Cyber Physical Systems Initiative for INL. Previously, Mr. Austad created INL’s Cybercore Integration Center and led outreach to agencies, national labs, and academic institutions to build a collaborative, interdisciplinary teaming environment linked to INL’s Research & Education Campus expansions. As a Director of the Mission Support Center, now part of Cybercore, Mr. Austad led a senior technical group that developed new methods for analysis of targeted cyber threats, provided technical context for mitigation priorities, and created new paradigms for information sharing between industry infrastructure owners, threat analysis teams, and government leaders. He also served as the Director of the Special Programs, which developed special technology and analysis for defense and intelligence agencies in advanced materials, trace detection, nuclear nonproliferation, electronic warfare modeling, information operations, and wireless communications systems.
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Recorded on June 24, 2024The post Securing Physical Infrastructure at Idaho National Labs – Wayne Austad appeared first on .