Sam Chanoski

Sam Chanoski
Director of Threat Intelligence
Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC)
North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC)

Sam Chanoski is the Electricity ISAC’s Director of Threat Intelligence, where he works with government and private sector organizations to share and analyze threat intelligence in the context of the electric sector, develop mitigation strategies for significant grid threats, and provide technical and business context to E-ISAC’s activities. He is also the executive sponsor for NERC’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Committee (CIPC). Sam has worked at NERC since 2012, first leading the Bulk Power System Awareness (BPSA) group and later also NERC’s Event Analysis group and oversight of the ERO Event Analysis Program. Before coming to NERC, Sam worked at Duquesne Light Company as a Shift Supervisor, managing the real-time operation of Pittsburgh’s transmission and distribution system. Prior to that, he worked as a line supervisor with FirstEnergy in Easton, PA, and with Consolidated Edison as a Substations Shift Supervisor and as an Auxiliary Systems Maintenance Supervisor in New York City. Before coming to the electric industry, he worked for six years with the US government. Sam has a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Operations Research from a small technical college in Colorado, an MBA from Lehigh University, a Masters of Engineering degree in Transmission and Distribution Engineering from Gonzaga University, and a graduate certificate in Information Security and Assurance from Norwich University. He is a NERC certified system operator at the Reliability Coordination level, and is PJM certified as a Transmission System Operator and a Generation System Operator, as well as holding Certified Ethical Hacker and Security+ certifications and active security clearances from the Department of Energy and Department of Defense. His professional interests include real-time transmission and distribution operations, organizational behavior, control systems cybersecurity, and emergency management and resiliency.