In Memoriam: Ronald L. Krutz, Ph.D., PE

Summary

Ronald L. Krutz, Ph.D., PE, CISSP, ISSEP, age 86, of Gibsonia, Pa., formerly of North Huntington, Pa., died on January 16, 2025. He was a distinguished author, teacher and cybersecurity specialist with more than 30 years of experience in industrial automation and control systems, distributed computing systems, computer architectures, information assurance methodologies and information security.

Born in Duquesne, Pa., on August 27, 1938, he is the son of the late Louis and Rose (Cardamone) Krutz. He served in the U.S. Army Ordinance Corps as a 1^st lieutenant at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala. He held a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and was a licensed electrical engineer.

His distinguished career started at Gulf Oil Corp. and continued at Carnegie-Mellon University, where he was a faculty member in the electrical and computer engineering (ECE) department. While there, Krutz founded and led the Carnegie Mellon Research Institute (CMRI) Cybersecurity Center.

Later in his career, he was a professor at Webster University, a distinguished visiting lecturer at the University of New Haven and a senior fellow of the International Cybersecurity Center of George Mason University. Later, he was chief scientist at Security Risk Solutions Inc., in Mount Pleasant, S.C.

Krutz is the author of 16 books in the areas of cybersecurity, microprocessors, system design and computer architecture. He authored the book Securing SCADA Systems, as well as the first and second editions of ISA’s Industrial Automation and Control System Security Principles: Protecting the Critical Infrastructure. He holds seven U.S. patents in the area of digital systems and has also published a variety of technical papers.

The second edition of his book contains a significant amount of new and enhanced content, including emerging approaches to industrial automation and control system (IACS) security. Topics include Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), the open platform communications unified architecture (OPC UA) (IEC 62541), Industry 4.0, the “OWASP IoT Top Ten” security categories, big data analytics, the NIST Big Data Interoperability Framework, the NIST Framework for Cyber-Physical Systems, the NIST Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity and software-defined elements.

Krutz was the beloved husband of Hilda (Napolitano) Krutz, the loving father of two daughters and the admired grandfather of four. He met his wife at a young age, married in 1961 and was a devoted husband for 63 years. According to his obituary, “he most enjoyed being a grandfather and his proudest and most beautiful accomplishment was his family.”

_{This obituary originally appeared in the August/September issue of Automation.com Monthly.}