Joshua Rivera is an applied cybersecurity and resilience research leader in the Secure Cyber-Energy Systems Group. Rivera provides program development and system-level analysis for cybersecurity initiatives within an applied cyber-energy emulation context.  He applies modern and forward-looking solutions for the posturing of the future electrical grid, architects systems- and network-level approaches for cybersecurity and resilience, and supports strategic research objectives, impact analysis, and experiment design. He engages and collaborates with diverse technical groups, with a focus on improving the convergence of cybersecurity and resilience for energy systems.

Research Interests

Cybersecurity and resilience scaling for the future distributed grid

Operational technology communications security and resilience via named data networking

Data-driven namespace orchestration for cybersecurity and resilience

Education

B.S., Criminology, Regis University

A.A.S., Cybersecurity, Red Rocks Community College

Professional Experience

Information technology instructor, Arapahoe Community College (2017)

Technical trainer, Red Rocks Community College (2015–2017)

Network specialist, IBM Business Continuity and Resiliency Services (2016)

Associations and Memberships

Member, Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers

Featured Work

HIDES: Hybrid Intrusion Detector for Energy Systems, IEEE Texas Power and Energy Conference (2020)

A Multidimensional Holistic Framework for the Security of Distributed Energy and Control Systems, IEEE Systems Journal (2020)

NREL’s Cyber-Energy Emulation Platform for Research and System Visualization, NREL Technical Report (2020)

SHARP-Net: Platform for Self-Healing and Attack-Resilient PMU Networks, IEEE Power and Energy Society Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Conference (2020)

Patents

Network Visualization, Intrusion Detection, and Network Healing, U.S. Patent No. 17/069,320 (2020)

Awards and Honors

NREL Chairman’s Award (2020)

NREL Employee of the Month (2020)

NREL President’s Award (2019)