Exclusive Insights | Expert Tips | Community Highlights
This year’s event promises to be our most insightful and inspiring yet, featuring industry leaders who are at the forefront of innovation in SCADA systems and industrial automation.
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to stay ahead in the ever-evolving world of SCADA and industrial automation.
MEET THE 2026 Guest Speakers!
Securing SCADA: Two-Factor Authentication & Data Diode
This session will demonstrate how to implement secure login protocols and safely transmit historian data from high-security environments without compromising network integrity.
Daniel Bartucci leads the North American critical infrastructure business for Owl Cyber Defense, a pure-play cybersecurity company specializing in data diode and cross domain solutions that protect the most sensitive government and commercial networks worldwide. With over 15 years of cybersecurity experience spanning complex industries including financial services and healthcare, and operational technology environments. Dan is committed to one mission: protecting the critical infrastructure that powers our cities, secures our water supply, and defends our nation from sophisticated cyber threats. A trusted advisor and problem-solver, he’s passionate about partnering with organizations to secure the infrastructure that powers our daily lives.
Owl Cyber Defense provides hardened network security checkpoints for absolute threat prevention and secure data availability through cross domain and data diode solutions. Certified by the U.S. government, independent testing authorities, and international standards bodies, Owl technologies and services help to secure the network edge and enable controlled unidirectional and bidirectional data transfers. For over 20 years, clients worldwide in defense, intelligence, and infrastructure have trusted Owl’s unmatched expertise to protect networks, systems, and devices. Data Diode & Cross Domain Solutions | Owl Cyber Defense
Real world MQTT with VTScada
Objective: “Plug and play” IoT device compatibility with VT SCADA
Background: Cattron (previously ANTX) has a long relationship with VTScada and has a hosted VTScada solution. We wanted to make it easier for customers with on premise or hosted VTScada systems elsewhere to integrate our IoT hardware solutions quickly and securely.
MQTT was the answer. Working with Dave Spencer we now have an MQTT driver and OEM Layer available to any VTScada customer. Either leveraging our secure MQTT broker on AWS or any other MQTT broker, customers can be up and running quickly.
Walk through of real-world example, including peer to peer networking over MQTT
Benefits of MQTT: built in encryption and cybersecurity, “share” select data with 3rd party reporting/AI and other platforms if desired, redundancy and availability through failover MQTT brokers
Charles Christie is the Product Manager, IoT at Cattron, bringing an entrepreneurial mindset and a proven track record of driving business growth through innovative technology solutions. With deep expertise across Internet of Things (IoT), software as a service (SaaS), AI and data analytics, cloud computing and wireless data technologies, Charles helps shape customer-driven products that deliver measurable value and strong ROI. Charles’ experience spans a wide range of industries and mission-critical applications, including Homeland Security, disaster preparedness and response, public safety, energy, environmental compliance, water and wastewater, and precision agriculture. He is recognized for identifying and applying technology best practices to build scalable, high-performance wireless IoT solutions that solve real-world operational challenges.
Cattron is a global leader in advanced control and monitoring technologies, delivering innovative control solutions that improve efficiency, productivity, and safety across industrial operations worldwide. Cattron’s water management portfolio is built around effortless SCADA remote monitoring and control solutions designed to help operators manage critical infrastructure with confidence. Our SCADA systems enable real-time visibility into key operational data, including flow rates, pump status, power and temperature fluctuations, and more. Users can access critical alarm notifications, status reports, and performance trends without third-party costs or complex integration requirements. At the center of these solutions is RemoteIQ™, Cattron’s cloud-based platform that provides seamless, reliable access to equipment performance from any mobile device, anytime. Supporting both small and large-scale applications, Cattron SCADA solutions are trusted across industrial and municipal water and wastewater plants, landfills, public utilities, and sewer collection systems to optimize operations and protect essential assets
Hacked at the Pump: What Water Operators Need to Know About Cybersecurity (Before It Happens to You)
Cyberattacks against water and wastewater systems are no longer hypothetical, they are happening right now. From Florida to Texas to Pennsylvania, real utilities just like yours have faced attempted takeovers, ransomware, and remote access abuse.
In this fast-paced, operator-friendly session, cybersecurity expert Shawn Waldman cuts through the hype and explains what cyber risk really looks like inside water and wastewater facilities. You’ll learn how attackers get in, why remote access is the biggest risk, and what simple steps operators can take to reduce risk immediately.
No technical background required. No scare tactics. Just real-world stories, practical guidance, and clear takeaways you can bring back to your facility on Monday morning.
You’ll walk away knowing:
• How water systems are actually being targeted
• The most common mistakes utilities make
• What regulators expect (and what they don’t)
• How to respond calmly when something goes wrong
• The top actions operators can take to protect their systems
Shawn Waldman is the CEO of SecureCyber and a cybersecurity speaker focused on helping
leaders understand and manage cyber risk in practical, real-world terms. He works with local
governments, critical infrastructure, and regulated industries and is a frequent presenter on
cybersecurity strategy, compliance, and emerging threats.
SecureCyber is a cybersecurity firm that helps local governments, critical infrastructure, and
regulated organizations reduce cyber risk through practical security programs, compliance
support, and executive-focused education. SecureCyber | Proven. Proactive. Personalized.
Thank you to all our past Guest Speakers!
Ian Schmertzler, Co-CEO, Dispel
ScadaFest 2025
SECURING AN OT ENVIRONMENT WITHOUT STOPPING EVERYTHING
Lack the staff, time, or regulatory pressure to align your OT environment with cybersecurity standards but don’t want your system frozen by ransomware? See what a textbook process looks like and learn from a series of case studies ways to do things in a methodical, iterative, fashion.
ScadaFest 2024
HARDENING A CYBER PHYSICAL SYSTEM AGAINST A MODERN ADVERSARY
Ian outlines how to align VTScada systems with the cybersecurity standards required by most US critical infrastructure and roughly 40,000 private firms. He’ll cover resources you’ll need, management techniques that have worked, as well as case studies of small and large institutions that successfully completed this process.
VTScadaFest – March 25 & 25, 2022:
A Crash Course on Cyber Resilience for Water Utilities
Grab a coffee and a pad of paper. This is a crash course in the processes, systems, costs, and consequences of getting a utility aligned with baseline and advanced cyber resilience standards.
VTScadaFest – March 25 & 25, 2022:
Notes from the Field: Cyber Resilience, Moving Target Defense, and a Return to Meaningful Operational Efficiency Gains
Through over 20 publications in the last 25 months, the standards that define cyber resilience in the United States have been overhauled to formalize the use of the cybersecurity technologies commercialized over the past decade. The result for early movers has been a welcome return to faster connections, falling costs, tighter lines of communication, and simpler network architectures. This non-technical talk will cover what changed, and the operational impacts being observed in the field.
VTScadaFest, March 5-6, 2020:
A New Defense Against Network Attack
Hackers spend months patiently mapping network connections and architecture looking for vulnerabilities. But what if that architecture was constantly changing? Moving Target Defense, by the US-based tech firm Dispel, thwarts attackers by doing just that. Check out Ian’s presentation below:
Kevin Smith, Wireless Automation Director, ELPRO Technologies
ScadaFest 2025:
REDUCING COMM COSTS USING MQTT SPARKPLUG B
Learn how ELPRO, reduced the communications bill of a Louisiana utility by two-thirds by replacing Modbus polling over an aging landline with Cellular communications using VTScada’s MQTT driver with Sparkplug B.
Jesse Daniels Engineering Manager – Maintenance & Spare Parts New Model at Toyota Motor North America
ScadaFest 2024
How Toyota Determines Key Performance Indicators in a Sea of Datapoints
Toyota wrote the book on efficiency and reliability and is continuously improving to remain a leader in the industry. Learn how they are integrating VTScada to meet their next generation standards of quality, reliability, and efficiency. Toyota has fourteen manufacturing sites and over thirty non-manufacturing sites across North America. Jesse Daniels walks you through what Toyota is doing to streamline data collection for critical equipment. He will also demonstrate how VTScada is being used to support the Toyota Environmental Challenge 2050.
Dave Morse, VP and GM of Industrial Automation Regional Business Unit at Delta Electronics (Americas)
ScadaFest – March 21-22, 2024
Control Your E-Motions and Re-Charge Your Knowledge of Delta
Dave Morse of Delta Electronics (Americas) demonstrates how their family of hardware solutions help you bring your customer’s goals to life. Topics will include PLCs, VFDs with embedded PLCs, servos vs. VFDs, servos for robots, and EV Chargers connected to PV inverters.
VTScadaFest – March 30-31, 2023
Variable Frequency Drives (VFD) Best Practices
Dave Morse, VP of Delta America, will help you optimize your VFDs to maximize performance, minimize power consumption, and extend the life of your motors. Topics will include most common configuration errors, top 20 parameters to always program, and getting the most use from a VFD.
Dave Ubert, Senior Automation Engineer at McKim & Creed & President, ISA – Tampa
ScadaFest 2024
Leveraging Industry-leading ISA Standards Into Excellent, Efficient, HMI Systems
If you want to improve various aspects of your HMI installations, including your graphics environment, alarm management, and overall usability and performance, then this is the session for you! Learn to leverage ISA’s industry standards to improve all aspects of your SCADA system.
VTScadaFest – March 30-31, 2023
Leveraging ISA Standards for HMI Development
The International Society of Automation (ISA) is a non-profit professional organization founded in 1945 to create a better world through automation. ISA empowers the global automation community through standards and knowledge sharing. ISA has developed widely used global standards to assist the automation community in the accurate, efficient, and cost-effective development of SCADA system components. This presentation will focus on the ISA standards related to HMI systems and how they can be leveraged to develop excellent and successful SCADA projects.
VTScadaFest, January 16-17, 2019:
Long Term SCADA Planning
Topics include evaluating your current situation and your options, migration strategies, financial considerations, sustainable technology, security, and planning for the unexpected.
Lee Allen, SCADA Programmer Developer at City of Lethbridge, Alberta
ScadaFest 2024
A Single-handed Success Story
Lee Allen takes you on a journey that begins with a search for a more scalable SCADA software for the city’s wastewater treatment facility and leads to him single-handedly developing a fully featured VTScada application that would incorporate their septic truck drop off system and integrate with third-party services like Itanta’s dashboarding and analytics platform.
Dayton Marchese, Strategic Partnerships Manager at OptiRTC, Inc.
ScadaFest 2024
TRANSFORMING STORMWATER FROM A CHALLENGE INTO AN ASSET
By integrating the most trusted control platform, VTScada, with stormwater-specific applications by Opti, communities can transform their stormwater management systems making them more resilient and sustainable. Dayton will demonstrate this approach at the City of Ormond Beach, Florida, where they are using Opti and VTScada to protect communities from flood risk.
Ben Burke, Chief Operating Officer at Dispel
VTScadaFest – March 30-31, 2023
A Crash Course in Cyber Resilience for Water Utilities | 2023 Edition
Cyber resilience is about making a system hard to kill, irrespective of whether that’s from an attacker or a rogue soda can on the server rack. Grab a pencil and several cups of coffee. This 1-hour crash course will cover the practical considerations of how to do this at a water utility in two months.
Sean & Wylie Chenoweth, Founders at AiRCADA
VTScadaFest – March 30 & 31, 2023
The Next Generation of Industrial Augmented Reality
Learn how your organization can take operational efficiency to the next level by pairing Aircada’s next-generation augmented reality system with VTScada for a seamless step into the future of industrial operations.
Harshad Bhagwat, CTO at Itanta Analytics
VTScadaFest – March 30-31, 2023
Analytics & Reporting for citizen developers
Itanta’s codeless reporting package integrates directly with VTScada. Hear the authors of this software describe how can you get powerful reports.
VTScadaFest – March 24-25, 2022
Itanta Reporting and Analytics
The Itanta reporting software is a third-party tool with built-in connectivity to the VTScada historian. Come watch what this product can do without writing any code as presented by one of Itanta’s founders.
Mervyn Betts, President at BettsM Controls Inc
ScadaFest, March 21-22, 2024
Analytics & Reporting for Citizen Developers (co-presented with Lee Allen!)
Lee Allen takes you on a journey that begins with a search for a more scalable SCADA software for the city’s wastewater treatment facility and leads to him single-handedly developing a fully featured VTScada application that would incorporate their septic truck drop off system and integrate with third-party services like Itanta’s dashboarding and analytics platform.
VTScadaFest, March 30-31, 2023
Analytics & Reporting for Citizen Developers (co-presented with Harshad Bhagwat!)
Itanta Analytics is a NO CODE data analytics and reporting platform designed specifically for the manufacturing industry. Our platform can be used to acquire, aggregate, visualize and distribute manufacturing process data from various industrial automation systems. Itanta has a specific connector for VTScada database which can enable customers to generate reports and dashboards from the VTScada without any coding.
Mike Stoup, I&C/SCADA Group Manager at McKim & Creed
VTScadaFest – February 7-8, 2018
Cloud Hosted Stormwater Solution
A case study by Mike Stoup of McKim & Creed describing the hosted monitoring and control system that they developed for Virginia Beach Public Works.
- Winner 2025 – The VTScada Excellence Award
- Honorable Mention 2023 – The VTScada Innovation Award
- Honorable Mention 2022 – The VTScada Innovation Award
Norm Anderson, Principal EI&C Engineer at Carollo
VTScadaFest – February 7-8, 2018
Development of a Five-Year SCADA Master Plan
Polk County Utilities in Florida was using a variety of outdated control systems to monitor and control their distributed infrastructure that included 7 WWTPs, 36 WPFs, and over 300 lift stations. They tasked Carollo Engineers, Inc., to develop a 5-year comprehensive SCADA Master Plan to transition to a single system that would be secure, resilient, operator friendly, scalable, and cost effective. Learn how Carollo used VTScada to meet these requirements and exceed expectations.
Sam Lau, SCADA Specialist and Kurtis Jackson, SCADA Specialist at Canadian Natural Resources Limited (CNRL)
VTScadaFest – February 7-8, 2018
Advanced SCADA Redundancy Helps A Major Oil And Gas Producer Adopt A Unified Platform
This presentation shares a glimpse of the largest VTScada architecture and deployment in the world. Our company is always pushing the capabilities of VTScada, breaking new ground and creating innovation. We’ve created some great widgets in our OEM layer; our mobile access is now secured by multifactor authentication with single sign-on and we’re steadily building a dashboard to monitor all of our VTScada hosts. Operate by Exception is a transformative operating model that is set to become the future of our company and in the industry. We’ll explain the concept and demonstrate the innovations we’ve created in VTScada to support this model including summary pages, SMS communication, GPS location tracking and reports. Lastly, we’ll take a forward look into our future VTScada development plans and offer opportunities to share and collaborate with our peers in the SCADA industry.
Synchronization Key to Standardization Whitepaper