Mike Assante, the current Vice President and Chief Security Officer of NERC (North American Electric Reliability Corporation), will be leaving the organization at the end of May 2010. This announcement came from NERC President and CEO Gerry Cauley who said that Assante will be pursuing an “excellent opportunity to lead a new national effort to measure and enhance the skills of the cyber security work force on which industry and government depend.”

Assante has been in this position since August 2008 which was newly created at the time to address Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) as part of NERC’s program functions. He was directly involved in the NERC-CIP standards setting process to enhance the cyber security of the grid and proposed federal legislation to address threats to and vulnerabilities of the bulk power system (BPS). NERC had come under sharp criticism from Congress in regards to its efforts to alert owners and operators to the vulnerability which came to be known as the “Aurora incident”.

The NERC announcement also mentioned that the organization is currently soliciting input on Assante’s replacement and will be posting the opening on the website next week.