Cybersecurity board appointments.

The ISA Global Cybersecurity Alliance (ISAGCA) has appointed a chairperson—Megan Samford, VP, Chief Product Security Officer for Energy Management at Schneider Electric—and vice chairperson—Sharul Rashid, Custodian Engineer and Group Technical Authority of Instrumentation and Control at PETRONAS—to its advisory board.

Megan Samford (left) and Sharul Rashid - ISAGCA Board

Megan Samford is VP, Chief Product Security Officer for Energy Management at Schneider Electric, is a security executive with focus on industrial control systems security, critical infrastructure protection, and risk analysis. In taking her role at Schneider Electric, Samford became the first female CPSO for a major industrial without first being a CISO, a significant milestone for women in industrial control systems security. She is currently leading a community driven effort under ISAGCA known as Incident Command System for Industrial Control Systems (ICS4ICS), which seeks to establish an operational incident response organization by Q1 2021. ICS4ICS includes a common language for responding to cyber incidents and provide avenues for mutual assistance between organizations.

“As the first Founding Member of the ISAGCA, Schneider Electric remains deeply committed to collaborating across industry to help our customers and all end users, regardless of segment and geography, secure and protect their people, assets and operations,” Samford said. “The ISA Standards Committee created the prevailing ISA/IEC 62443 series of standards by leveraging use cases from more than 20 different verticals. Our goal now is to build on that great work by expanding awareness, adoption, and application of the standard. I am excited to work with the diversity of ISAGCA membership to develop the programs and create the resources we need to meet our objectives. I am also excited to see community-identified needs and focused initiatives, like ICS4ICS, come to life through ISAGCA and its relationships with other non-profits and governments from around the world. Together, we will drive a standards-based, end-to-end approach—encompassing people, processes, and technology—to help safeguard global industry from sophisticated cyberattacks.”

The Advisory Board Vice Chairperson, Sharul Rashid, is Custodian Engineer and Group Technical Authority of Instrumentation and Control at PETRONAS, Malaysia's fully integrated oil and gas company. Sharul has more than 30 years of experience managing and leading teams and strategies covering a diverse range of instrumentation and control issues in refineries, gas liquefaction, petrochemicals, and gas pipeline transmission. PETRONAS, the world’s fourth-largest exporter of LNG, will intensify efforts towards reducing direct emissions from operations and the electricity used by the company and recently pledged to become a net zero emitter of greenhouse gases by 2050.

“I am honored to work with my colleagues around the world to advance critical cybersecurity initiatives,” Rashid said. “Together, we will work to increase awareness and expertise, developing best practice tools to help companies successfully navigate the lifecycle of cybersecurity protection.”

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