By Rich Heidorn Jr.

ATLANTA — “For the record,” joked Ben Miller, “I cry watching ‘Frozen.’”

Miller was one of five former colleagues who offered sometimes tearful, often funny, tributes to the late Mike Assante during the emotional highlight of GridSecCon 2019 last week.

Assante died July 5 at 48, following a more than 15-year battle with cancer. After serving more than a decade in the Navy and being named Intelligence Officer of the Year for the Pacific Fleet in 1997, Assante became NERC’s first chief security officer after a stint as CSO for American Electric Power. He later worked for Idaho National Laboratory and became director of the SANS Institute’s industrial control systems and supervisory control and data acquisition security training curricula.

The speakers Oct. 23 praised him as a visionary, noting his 2009 letter to stakeholders as NERC CSO that called for a shift to consider potential misuse of cyber assets, not just the loss of them.

“A lot of the things he [did] at NERC, including the letter, including the HILF report — high-impact, low frequency report — created the structure [to] move the ball forward beyond merely regulation,” said Miller, vice president of professional services and R&D for Dragos. One product of that effort was the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center. (“We probably wouldn’t have the E-ISAC without Michael Assante,” NERC CEO Jim Robb told the organization’s board of directors in August.)

Mentorship

But Assante’s greatest gift, speakers said, was his ability to inspire, recalling career pivots they made based on his advice. And his legacy, they said, would be the “community” of cyber patriots he sought to protect critical infrastructure.

“Throughout his career, Mike informed presidents, shaped policies of foreign countries, helped establish standards for nations’ key resources, advised CEOs and leaders,” said SANS colleague Tim Conway, technical director of the institute’s ICS and SCADA programs. “But more important to Mike … has always been the individual lives that he has changed, that he’s invested in, and the things that those people have gone on to do in their own careers … throughout this industry.

“One of his most amazing skills has always been in identifying, connecting, motivating and enabling people to go on and do things that they wouldn’t have normally done. I’m one of those people who had the opportunity to work with Mike in a variety of different roles [and] organizations over the years. And [at] each one, he led me to challenges and to move in ways I would not have been comfortable with if he was not there with me.”

Jason Christopher met Assante while working at FERC and stayed in touch when he moved to the Department of Energy, eventually working with him at SANS. He remembers Assante approaching him when he was representing FERC during a NERC Critical Infrastructure Protection Committee meeting, where Assante was giving a presentation about the industry’s aging workforce.

“So much of my work about training … and trying to inspire others — I can pinpoint it to him coming up to me in the back of a room and just inspiring me,” said Christopher, now chief technology officer for Axio.

“The first couple times you [met him, you] realized he just kind of knew everything,” Christopher continued. “Everyone wanted his opinion … on how to do any project at DOE. If you told me that the HVAC vendor for DOE was asking Mike Assante’s opinion, I’d say, ‘Yeah that makes sense.’ Everyone wanted to get his perspective because he had seen so much and done so much already and helped the industry be what it is.”

Bryan Owen, cybersecurity manager for OSIsoft, who worked with Assante at INL, recalled a “red-blue” training at which Assante was one of the motivational speakers. “He would come in and just wow everyone,” Owen said. “And after that, I had guys coming back and telling me all the great things they wanted to do — they were turned on to do secure design and secure by default … Mike just had that gift.”

Owen also recalled Assante leading a group of reporters through the lab during a media tour following news of Stuxnet.

“One of the journalists asked, ‘Tell me about this Aurora test.’ Mike’s eyes lit up, and he started describing this [herky jerky] diesel generator that had served its purpose so well, and in its final act, it was sacrificed to prove that cyber really could take one of these things down,” he said. “You could just see everyone listening to him. And they all felt sorry for the generator.”

He also recounted a photo of Assante that was posted at a SANS cyber summit. “The message around that was, ‘We can’t sit back and be reactive when it comes to protecting infrastructure. We have to go out and hunt for these bad guys in our systems.’ That’s stuck with me ever since.”

INL named a classified conference room for Assante, said Zach Tudor, the lab’s associate director for national and homeland security science and technology. “Mike is a huge figure among all of us at Idaho National Laboratory,” he said. “If he would suggest, ‘Do you think you should do this?’ It was kind of like, ‘You better do this.’”

Fifth of July

Assante survived his first battle with cancer more than 15 years ago but learned — at GridSecCon 2017 — that his leukemia had returned, Conway said.

“He waited [to pass] until after the Fourth of July. I talked to him the day before and he said, ‘I don’t really want to go on the Fourth of July when everyone is supposed to recognize the nation and our freedom. I really hope I can make it another day. He really had control of this the whole way through.”

“And he didn’t want to die on July 6, which is his wife’s birthday,” wrote Dragos founder Robert M. Lee, who continued the story in a blog post titled, “Goodbye Mike Assante, Thank you For Literally Everything.”

“So essentially Mike chose the fifth,” Lee wrote. “That’s the kind of stuff we make up about people to pretend they’re a badass. But that was just another true story and small feat by Mike. Mike didn’t lose his battle to cancer; he kicked its ass a decade ago. It came back, and he told it, ‘No, you’re going to wait your turn.’”

Community

Christopher said it was community that Assante was thinking about at the end. “My last conversation with Mike, he mentioned this community, the people in this room. And he said, ‘This is what’s important. It’s the community,’” he recounted. Assante said “to take care of each other because we’re all making a difference, and we’re doing what we do best, and we do it best together. He said to make sure that we talk about that. That we talk about us as a community. The specialness we have as a group.”

Assante left behind his wife, Christina, and three children, Alex, Anabel and Asher.

Tom Vanderhorst, Christina’s brother, ended the program with reminiscences of campfires at which his brother-in-law talked about his “community.”

“Along with being passionate about those he loved, he was also passionate about this community,” he said. “He was living his dream.”