Investigate the practical steps utility leaders and finance professionals can take to stay ahead of the evolving financial and regulatory landscape for public utilities. Delve into the upcoming changes to governmental accounting standards, including walking through practical examples of how these changes could affect financial reporting and decision making. Then explore common attributes of fraud and how organizations are preventing and addressing it, including why strong internal controls and proper segregation of duties remain essential. Discuss single audit and regulatory considerations and how control weaknesses can create broader compliance risks. Conclude with a forward looking discussion on funding capital projects, including the role of financial forecasts, key budget to actual controls, and how capital decisions affect rates and your long term financial planning.

Topics: 

• GASB changes on the horizon and what they mean for your financial reports
• Fraud prevention and internal controls for resource-constrained organizations
• What utility finance pros should know about regulatory changes and compliance
• Financial planning and sustainable options for funding capital projects

Investigate the practical steps utility leaders and finance professionals can take to stay ahead of the evolving financial and regulatory landscape for public utilities. Delve into the upcoming changes to governmental accounting standards, including walking through practical examples of how these changes could affect financial reporting and decision making. Then explore common attributes of fraud and how organizations are preventing and addressing it, including why strong internal controls and proper segregation of duties remain essential. Discuss single audit and regulatory considerations and how control weaknesses can create broader compliance risks. Conclude with a forward looking discussion on funding capital projects, including the role of financial forecasts, key budget to actual controls, and how capital decisions affect rates and your long term financial planning.

Topics: 

• GASB changes on the horizon and what they mean for your financial reports
• Fraud prevention and internal controls for resource-constrained organizations
• What utility finance pros should know about regulatory changes and compliance
• Financial planning and sustainable options for funding capital projects

It is easy to get overwhelmed by cybersecurity findings and analyses. The challenge lies in producing clear, measurable, leadership-ready decisions out of this sea of information. Gain strategies for how to translate technical results into priorities for taking action, discuss how to establish effective governance structures, and review steps to adopt a measurable assurance model that positions your organization to proactively tackle cybersecurity challenges.

Hear perspectives from both a small public power utility and an industry cyber practitioner on field-tested steps that can meaningfully improve your organization’s security posture and resilience. Get ideas and practical guidance for boosting your security, even without large security teams, dedicated OT staff, or enterprise-level budgets to back you up.

A bevy of state and federal government partners play a role in information sharing to help electric utilities prepare for and respond to cyber threats. Discuss when and how utilities should engage these partners during a cyber event, as well as practical ways to establish trusted relationships and communication channels before an incident occurs, when time and clarity matter most.

This session will examine important lessons learned from a cyber incident response and speak to the value of cyber mutual assistance for public power utilities. Attendees will get a peek behind the curtain at the response and recovery associated with a ransomware event with actionable insights and resources that can help improve incident response planning. The session will also highlight the ESCC’s Cyber Mutual Assistance Program and provide additional information on how attendees can join this network of utility cyber professionals.

Cloud platforms outpace traditional Active Directory in both scale and complexity. Walk through how Easton Utilities developed a solution to address the resulting visibility and control challenges and improve employee provisioning, which evolved into a governance solution that improves account management, reduces costs, and provides cross-system visibility without deploying a large enterprise Identity and Access Management platform. Review what Easton learned along the way about system architecture, data integration, and governance workflow — and what that could mean for your utility’s identity oversight.

Get a peek into how public power utilities are already using artificial intelligence and how they expect it to augment operations in the near future. Hear where AI has been most helpful in their organizations, what risks remain in its use, and learn about open source AI tools utilities could leverage for cybersecurity.