Russell Richardson

Bio Russell Richardson is Sr. Manager of OT Cybersecurity for Duke Energy and Piedmont Natural Gas. Duke Energy serves 7.7MM energy customers, 1.6MM gas customers, and owns approximately 51,000 megawatts of generating capacity. Russell also serves as program delivery lead for the IT/OT Cybersecurity Program, bringing cyber monitoring and response to all operational areas of the company. This includes the Natural Gas, Nuclear Generation, Regulated and Renewable Energy, Commercial Renewables, Customer Delivery, and Transmission business units. He previously managed the IT Cybersecurity Architecture team, as well as the Critical Infrastructure & Operations team. Russell was one of 11 people selected for the first cohort of the Operational Technology Defender Fellowship. This highly-selective education program provides OT security managers in the U.S. energy sector the opportunity to increase understanding of cyber strategies and tactics that state and nonstate actors use in targeting U.S. energy infrastructure, and how the U.S. government is positioned to counter these adversarial activities. The OT Defender Fellowship is sponsored by the Department of Energy’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER), and hosted by Idaho National Laboratory with support from Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Russell holds an M.S. in Technology and Organizational Leadership from Purdue University College of Engineering & Technology, a B.A. from the University of Minnesota, and various certifications.