Engineer Black & Veatch has brought in Ian Bramson as vice president of global industrial cybersecurity. Bramson is developing a strategy for the commercialization and business growth of all of Black & Veatch’s existing cybersecurity solutions for both infrastructure owners and agency clients.
Bramson was previously head of cybersecurity at Siemens and the American Bureau of Shipping. He says an increasingly connected infrastructure is driving owners of these infrastructure assets to reassess their security needs, and they’re asking engineers like Black & Veatch to inform their decisions. “The reason I came in is that Black & Veatch saw in the market an increase in the level of attacks on their customer base and critical infrastructure in general, and specific requests from customers saying, ‘Hey , we need help with that,” Bramson said.
Greater exposure
“The reason we’re getting so much demand for the service is because you get a lot more exposure,” Bramson said, pointing to major trends. “The infrastructure is increasingly connected. Whether it’s factory plants or utilities like water, you just pick one area of critical infrastructure, suddenly the more you connect with digitization and modernization, the desire to operate things in a remote, all this ends up being more exposure.”
Black & Veatch says Bramson will develop a new team within the firm focused on cybersecurity.
“Black & Veatch is uniquely positioned to take a global leadership role, identifying and providing cybersecurity solutions to our clients,” said Patrick Hogan, chief client officer at Black & Veatch. He added that Bramson’s knowledge of operations, the industrial and energy sector, as well as energy and water, makes him the ideal choice for the job.
