An international shift towards energy conservation and green technologies points to our improved awareness of the environment. Innovators around the world are tasked with the challenge of creating new technology that reduces toxic emissions, uses less electricity and reduces a dependence on fossil fuels.
The smart power grid is one such technology, with the potential to save energy, reduce costs, and increase reliability and transparency of our electrical power. The smart grid uses two-way digital technology to control appliances in consumers’ homes. It includes an intelligent monitoring system and incorporates the use of superconductive transmission lines for loess power loss. With this reliance upon technology it becomes critical to account for network resilience, costs associated with protection, deployment of forensics to detect attacks, and the dependence of other sectors of the economy on the electrical power grid.
The upcoming Global Cybersecurity Policy Conference will address these issues with speakers including:

• Jeffrey S. Katz - Chief Technology Officer, Energy and Utilities industry, IBM
• Dr. Ann Campbell - Director Cyber Strategic Thrust, Sandia National Laboratories
• Erfan Ibrahim - Technical Executive, Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)
• Martin Libicki - RAND Corporation, Author, Cyberdeterrence and Cyberwar
• Eric Trapp - Accenture Technology Consulting Practice Leader for the Utilities Industry
• Paul Winstanley - Director of Energy Initiatives, Stevens Institute of Technology
• Ben Stewart, P.E. - Sr. VP Facility Engineering Terremark Worldwide, Inc.

Jeffrey S. Katz - is the Chief Technology Officer for the Energy and Utilities industry at IBM. He is involved with the application, development, and innovation of IBM products, services, technology and research for electric power companies and related organizations. Jeff has worked on the industry’s strategic growth case, the IBM Innovation Jam workshops, the IBM Intelligent Utility Network initiative, and is the primary industry liaison with IBM Research. He led the Innovation Jam for Nuclear Power and was an invited speaker to the European Sector Technical Institute and the E&U University. He has presented at several industry conferences, and has participated in partnership discussions with equipment manufacturers. Jeff frequently engages with utility customer technology executives.

Prior to that he was the Manager of the Computer Science department at the U.S. Corporate Research Center of ABB, and then of ALSTOM, before that he was with ABB Power Generation, managing development of computer systems for nuclear and fossil power plants. He has extensive experience in research and development, computerization of power generation systems, real-time computing, computer systems, electronic communications, process control systems, and computer based enterprise engineering tools, scientific computing, and robotics.