
Dawn Cappelli is the Director of OT-CERT (Operational Technology –
Cyber Emergency Readiness Team) at Dragos. Dragos OT-CERT
provides free resources for the industrial control system (ICS) /OT
community that are developed to support asset owners and operators
of industrial infrastructure. As cybersecurity risks in OT environments
continue to rise, many organizations struggle with the resources or
expertise to address them, especially small to medium-sized
businesses (SMB). OT-CERT was created with these organizations in
mind. In addition, vulnerabilities discovered by Dragos’s Threat
Intelligence team are publicly disclosed through OT-CERT. Dawn
coordinates with teams from across Dragos to create OT cybersecurity
resources suitable for the SMB community. She also builds and
organizes an OT-CERT partnership network of global public and private
sector leaders and partners to enable and replicate best practices
across industries and expand the Dragos commitment to help mitigate
shared ICS/OT challenges.
Dawn was CISO for Rockwell Automation from 2016-2022 after serving
as Director, Insider Risk. Previously she was founder and director of
Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute CERT Insider Threat
Center. She started her career as a software engineer programming
nuclear power plants for Westinghouse. She co-authored the book,
“The CERT Guide to Insider Threats: How to Prevent, Detect, and
Respond to Information Technology Crimes (Theft, Sabotage, Fraud),”
which was inducted into the Cybersecurity Canon, which is a list of
must-read books for all cybersecurity practitioners.
Cappelli is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional, holds
a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of
Pittsburgh, is co-founder of the Open Source Insider Threat (OSIT)
information sharing group and is a member of the RSA Conference
Advisory Board, the Cybersecurity Collaborative Executive Committee,
and the CyberWire Hash Table. She was awarded the 2022 CIO Choice
Lifetime Achievement Award by the Pittsburgh Technology Council,
inducted into the ISSA Hall of Fame in 2021, honored as a member of
the 2021 CISOs Top 100 CISOs, 2020 Global CISO 100, and was named
Pittsburgh CISO of the Year in 2018.
Want Dawn’s frontline perspective for an upcoming event or news feature? Send your request to press@dragos.com