We talked with Jim Fama, retiring and on his last day at EEI, about his remarkable career.
Jim Fama was the Edison Electric Institute’s vice president for energy delivery since 2002. Prior to joining EEI, he was a senior counsel with LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene and MacRae, general counsel of ECWerks, deputy general counsel of Florida Power Corporation, assistant general counsel for the Bonneville Power Administration, and a trial attorney at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
PUF's Steve Mitnick: What's this new challenge that you are now taking on?
Jim Fama: Two things. The bigger one is cyber mutual assistance. It is for the ESCC, the Electric Subsector Coordinating Council.
This is where high-level industry executives from IOUs, municipals, co-ops, RTOs, the whole sector interfaces with DOE and DHS and the other federal agencies. And partners up on cyber issues, physical security, restoration, technology, those sorts of things. We call the project cyber mutual assistance. It's one of their high priorities right now.
The idea is to build a surge capacity in the event we have a significant cyber attack. It could be broad in scope, multiple entities hit at the same time.
How would we optimize our response? How would we optimize our in-house resources, contractors, government partners? Similar to what we do on mutual assistance, with respect to storm restoration.
But it's harder in cyber. It's much harder in cyber.
PUF's Steve Mitnick: Is the vision like mutual assistance for storms? There's a storm and a whole bunch of guys get in trucks, move equipment, and drive from Indiana to New Jersey. But only these are IT geeks?
Jim Fama: We are in the initial stages of it. We are going to have to set up our business model.
This needs to be a program. This needs to be a comprehensive program.