OT security, grounded in operations.

How I got here

From secure networks to the systems running the process.

My foundation is in networking, secure communications, and technical leadership in the Marine Corps. I moved into automation engineering, progressed through senior automation and OT systems engineering responsibilities, and brought that operational experience into OT cybersecurity consulting.

Along the way, I’ve worked across control systems, industrial networks, enterprise infrastructure, and regulated manufacturing. My experience includes more than 30 major DeltaV version upgrades over five years, predominantly in GMP-regulated biopharmaceutical environments. That repeated exposure shaped how I approach maintenance windows, dependencies, change control, testing, and the evidence needed to return a system to service.

I don’t see automation and cybersecurity as separate chapters. Understanding how a process operates is part of designing an architecture that can protect it.

Putting it into practice

Architecture has to survive implementation.

In one regulated manufacturing initiative, I served as both project manager and technical lead for coordinated control-system upgrades and automation-network segmentation within a fixed shutdown window. The work crossed manufacturing operations, utilities, building automation, laboratories, enterprise IT, automation, and quality, with parts of the environment remaining operational.

My responsibilities included developing and defending the implementation plan, obtaining departmental and site-leadership approval, owning the upgrade budget, allocating internal and vendor resources, and coordinating change control, test plans, and installation and operational qualification. We returned the systems to operation within the approved window.

One of the most useful tools was communication: separate schedule views for the people executing the work, the operations teams depending on system availability, and the leaders accountable for the outcome. The underlying plan was shared; the information each audience needed was different.

How I work

Make the dependencies—and the decisions—clear.

A segmentation strategy has to account for actual industrial communications. An identity control has to work during maintenance and recovery, not just normal operation. A restored server is only one part of restoring an operational service.

I work to connect those technical details to the decisions people need to make: what risk we’re reducing, what operations needs to keep running, what change is practical, who owns it, and how we’ll know it worked. That includes leading technical work, coordinating contractors and vendors, and helping people develop a shared understanding across disciplines.

Why this site exists

Make the knowledge easier to share.

This is a personal learning and writing space, not a catalog of client engagements. The articles, worksheets, and browser-only explorers are ways to make operational dependencies and security tradeoffs tangible—whether you’re approaching OT from IT, engineering, security, or leadership.

Start with how IT and OT differ, explore the worked examples and simulations, or browse the worksheets and resources. The examples are educational, not representations of a customer’s systems or instructions for operating real equipment.

Life outside work

Room for a different perspective.

I’ve visited 35 U.S. states and around 10 countries. Travel, photography, and smaller personal projects belong here alongside the technical work. This site is a place to share those interests too, not just a professional biography.

The travel section is becoming a photo album: selected pictures, place names, and short captions about the moments behind them.