About
A former Infantry soldier and Squad Leader from the U.S. Army to working on computer networks via time as a Training Officer in the 3d Infantry Regiment (before we had an MOS for computer specialists). I attended a technical school, obtained certifications and began working in classified and unclassified environments for the State Department, on other federal agencies including the DoD, DoC, and DoL.
After a short time in Intel’s new business group as a data center operations manager I left to work with Passport Systems at the Department of State.
Various events made my wife, and I consider leaving the DC beltway area and we moved to Oregon where I was an IT Audit lead at Wells Fargo and Company and did some consulting in and around the Portland Metro area eventually coming on board with Bonneville Power Administration (BPA). A federal non-profit, self-funded electric utility.
"IT" at BPA includes several major divisions and over 500 people including Industrial Control Systems and Operational Technology as well as more traditional IT. There are several control centers and all of the technology that connects BPA to 7 western states, over 260 substations and several dozen field offices. The IT team supports all missions from the one of the world’s large Environment, Fish and Wildlife mission, to a multi-million dollar Energy Efficiency mandate, Technology Innovation, not to mention marketing, selling and delivering power to load from 32 hydro projects, a nuclear power plant and hundreds of IBRs across 15,000 circuit miles of high voltage transmission lines, provide between ½ and ¾ of all high-voltage power in the Pacific Northwest, and an enormous amount of energy to Southern California (when they ask).
As the Chief Information Security Officer I was charged with creating a program consistent with federal statute, NIST guidance and Standards, DOE Orders, OMB directives and provisions of the North American Energy Reliability Corporation Critical Infrastructure Protection (NERC CIP). I took the reins of the Office of Cyber Security when there were 5 or so folks and no program in 2010. BPA now has a world class cybersecurity program capability of protecting from and responding to all cybersecurity threats it faces. Although any organization can always improve, I leave that group with an understanding of continuous process improvement and quality management in cybersecurity operations. It was for this that I was awarded the Administrator’s Excellence Award for Meritorious Service Award in 2023.
More recently I have served as the Chief Technology Officer and the only member of my staff as an individual contributor. In this role I am responsible for creating various technical reference architectures, for example the Cloud Native Reference Architecture, the Zero Trust Reference Architecture, and the Technology Strategy, providing consulting and counsel on cybersecurity, cloud security, management practices and the federal government. I’ve had this role since July of 2024.
Currently I am transitioning from federal service. I accepted the Delayed Resignation Program and will retire in October of this year. Managment asked that I stay on past the March 1st deadline for DRP recipients and I agreed to stay through March 30th. I have a bespoke consulting firm Trydan CyberSentinel LLC, and one client who is eager to have more of my time once my current approval from my Ethics Officer allows me to work more than a few hours a week.