Under Forty: Brandon Pixley

The pandemic didn't stop these luminaries from the energy and utilities space from innovating in all types of technologies. Ninety individuals sprang into action, creating new tools or strategies to better serve their colleagues and communities. This year, PUF is celebrating these ninety Under Forties. 
 

PUF's Steve Mitnick: Tell us about your job at CPS Energy, which is one of our nation's major utilities, what you do, and what your typical day is like.

Brandon Pixley: My job title is Director of Threat Intelligence and Security Awareness. I get the opportunity to lead two great groups, Enterprise IT Security and Threat Intelligence Security Awareness.

Part of my responsibility is to create processes and procedures for gathering what we call CTI, or Cyber Threat Intelligence, as well as intelligence in general of any threats facing our company. We then disseminate the information to our business units.

My team is also in charge of developing training and making sure users are aware of what could potentially impact them and our company. Those are things like phishing emails or putting fake thumb drives on the grounds to simulate some exercises.

The other half of my responsibility is leading the folks who secure and defend our infrastructure.

The Enterprise IT Security team's job is to identify, protect, and defend our systems against the threats that are discovered by our intelligence team, as well as any alerts that come from our commercial and governmental partners.

My day typically starts between 6:30 a.m. and 7:00 a.m. I log into my system and go through newsfeeds, looking for any cybersecurity events that may have occurred the day before. I also listen to the latest podcasts about threats that are up and coming and I gather that information to talk to my team about it and understand how they are impacting us.

Then I would have the team huddles that start around 8:00 a.m. After that, it's usually meetings, spending time working on building relationships with government partners, law enforcement agencies, or other utility industry peers to share information, partner and support each other.

PUF: How were you able to work with people across your company?

Brandon Pixley: That is something I work very hard on �" relationship building. Security can have a stigma, so I didn't just turn to our internal customers and say, no, you can't do this when they needed something.

I take the time to build a relationship with a person and understand their requirements and desires. That relationship building was twofold. It allowed our internal customers to understand where we, cybersecurity, were coming from if we needed to make a change, and I also understood what they were trying to achieve.

To be honest, that type of relationship building is where I have found the most success in my career. If I could offer any security executive advice, it would be don't just step in and say no. Understand first.

Don't become the team or the department of no. Understand what's going on. Understand your customer constraints, what they're trying to do, what they're trying to achieve, and then enable them to do that securely.

PUF: What do you attribute your early in life career success to?

Brandon Pixley: Hard work. The military instilled discipline in me the ability to get up every day and make sure I got the job done. Also, it's communicating. It's understanding what's going on, getting myself out there, having people know who I am, what my team can offer, then being there for them.

People relate me to cybersecurity because I was able to get my name out there, people knew what we were trying to do, and we weren't just shutting them down. As I said before, there's a stigma there, where it's a deep dark place, and it's not. It's just security. We are similar to IT; we just have a different component of IT.

PUF: What do you find most rewarding about your job?

Brandon Pixley: There are two pieces to that. I want to serve the people that are in Enterprise IT Security and Threat Intelligence and Security Awareness. I truly believe in servant leadership. That brings me the most joy, being able to help them accomplish their goals and what they're trying to achieve.

I enjoy that part of my job. If I had a team member with a problem and that person said, I can't get anywhere with this, I could make a few phone calls through the bridges I've established to help get the response that was needed, and the employee would be able to accomplish the task.

It's also seeing what my predecessors and my team have envisioned and building on that vision. I am lucky that I have a lot of support from my senior leadership team for establishing a solid cybersecurity program.

Seeing that program grow is rewarding for me because I've put the last ten years of my life into this. Seeing where it was when I started ten years ago to where it is today is rewarding as well.

PUF: Do you have advice for younger folks as to how they should pursue a good career in the utilities industry?

Brandon Pixley: I would say there's more to the utility industry or a utility company than you think. A lot of people think it's just creating electrons. People don't equate cybersecurity and IT and all the facets that make up the company.

They just think of power plants or solar farms, and there's a lot more to it. You have marketing opportunities, governmental relations, compliance, audit, and much more. If you are interested, keep an open mind because there is a lot that a utility company could offer.
 

2021 Fortnightly Under Forty conversations:

• Shivani Sidhar, Sempra Energy
• Devin James, Edison Electric Institute
• Jace Carlock, Entergy
• John Siefert, Electric Power Research Institute
• Amanda Olson, Burns & McDonnell
• Ali Mohammed, New York Power Authority
• Justin Segall, Uplight
• Brandon Pixley, CPS Energy
• Stephanie Crawford, NRECA
• Kristjana Kellgren, Alberta Utilities Commission
• Flavia Lenzi, ENGIE Italia
• Patrick Wruck, British Columbia UC
• Müge Özerten, Hitachi ABB Power Grids
• Aki Marceau, Hawaiian Electric