| Biography | |
|---|---|
 Prof. Chris Humphreys CEO/Director The Anfield Group, USA |
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| Title: How to Sustain Regulatory Climate Change within Critical Infrastructure Proactively through a Holistic look at Enterprise Risk Management, Operational Efficiency, and Emerging Technologies | |
| Abstract: In North America, the tendency to regulate key industries and critical infrastructures has been increasing over the last ten years with issues such as cybersecurity, physical security, supply chain management, and data privacy driving this trend. The challenge Critical Infrastructure owners/operators continue to face is that by the time a Regulation becomes enforceable, the long bureaucratic and tedious process to develop these regulations is never able to keep up with the pace at which threats and risks evolve. This creates a reactive risk posture for Critical Infrastructures instead of a proactive one where organizations can forecast regulatory climate change as a component of overall risk. This proactive approach also produces outcomes such as human capital optimization/retention, efficiencies in technologies, and overall reduction of risk across the enterprise. | |
| Biography: Chris Humphreys is an internationally recognized thought leader and evangelist in the industry verticals of Cybersecurity, Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP), Intelligence Operations, and Regulatory Compliance. With over 18 years of experience, Chris has written National-Level policy on cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection as well as been solely responsible for the enforcement and implementation of cybersecurity regulation for Electric Utilities within the Texas Region and across North America. Chris currently serves at the CEO and founder of The Anfield Group (www.theanfieldgroup.com), which is an Austin TX-based Cybersecurity and Regulatory Compliance Consulting firm. Under Chris' guidance, The Anfield Group has built a solid reputation since 2009 of designing and delivering cybersecurity programs that are both secure and sustainable. The Anfield Group's message continues to be focused on a holistic approach to security across multiple regulatory frameworks (NERC, NIST, Sox, HIPAA, PCI, FISMA) that produce compliance outputs as natural byproducts through sound policy and controls design, governance, and integrating the appropriate automation technologies to influence a more proactive approach to risk mitigation and compliance versus a reactive posture to the ever-changing regulatory climate. Prior to founding The Anfield Group, Chris served as the Director of Audits and Investigations at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) for the NERC Cybersecurity Framework for the entire state of Texas. He also was the founding chair of the NERC Critical Infrastructure Protection Compliance Working Group (CCWG) who was tasked with authoring the Audit process in place today for all of North America. Chris is also a fellow with the SANS Institute (www.sans.org) where he authored their "Securing the Utility" curriculum and serves on the SANS Industrial Control System Working Group. Before going into the Private Sector, Chris was able to foray his time as a Signals Intelligence Officer in the US Army into a stellar career inside the beltway in Washington DC. He served as one of the founding managers for the Department of Homeland Security's National Infrastructure Coordinating Center (NICC) and the United States Computer Emergency Response Team (US CERT). Before leaving DC to return to Texas, Chris was the Senior Program Manager and Director of Counterintelligence Operations for the Department of Defense's Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) in the areas of Cyber, Critical Infrastructure Protection, and Research and Technology Protection. It was during his time at CIFA that Chris authored Dept. of Defense Instruction (DODI) 5240.10 "Counterintelligence Support to Critical Infrastructure Protection" which is a National Level policy document still in place today. In 2017, Humphreys was appointed by the Texas Dept of Information Resources (DIR) through Texas Governor Greg Abbott as one of three voting members to the State’s Cybersecurity Council. This council will be tasked with leading a bipartisan effort to implement House Bill 8 “The Texas Cybersecurity Act” which will establish the cybersecurity framework and tools to protect all Texas Critical Infrastructure and Industrial Control Systems. | |
