WWT Exec Discusses Partnership With Dataminr To Build AI-Powered Cyber-Physical Platform

The partnership’s goal is to build an AI-driven, unified cyber-physical security platform.

(Chris Konrad, Vice President of Global Cyber, World Wide Technology)

World Wide Technology, one of the largest providers of technology services in the U.S., recently unveiled a new partnership with Dataminr, provider of an AI-powered, real-time event and risk alert platform.

The partnership’s goal is to build an AI-driven, unified cyber-physical security platform, “powered by Dataminr’s proprietary LLMs and WWT’s distinguished architecture to implement at scale,” according to a news release.

MES Computing spoke with WWT executive Chris Konrad, vice president of global cyber. Konrad leads a $4.5 billion global security organization within WWT's Global Solutions & Architecture division.

Konrad told MES Computing that the building of the platform was underway, and while there is no hard release date yet the first release may come early this summer.

He also spoke about the goals of the partnership.

Can you provide a bit of background on the partnership with Dataminr?

We're really excited about the partnership with Dataminr; they solve some very unique use cases that our customers are all very concerned about. There are roughly 3,500 active threat groups operating globally. Dataminr gives their customers an opportunity to provide, we’ll call it ‘real-time, multi-domain intelligence’, that helps them respond. It helps them to detect and respond to not just digital but also physical, geopolitical threats before they impact our critical infrastructure.

The convergence of cyber and physical, is that like sensors and door locks? Are you talking infrastructure?

It’s all of those. It could be operational technology systems. It could be any IoT devices. It could be the physical cameras. It could be any of the physical security measures that organizations use to protect their perimeters. All of those capabilities ... I would say, have been operating in, I wouldn’t say necessarily silos, but independently. But there’s more and more of a convergence.

It seems like physical security is kind of an afterthought until something happens. Is that one of the reasons for the partnership with Dataminr and the focus right now on this particular issue from WWT?

As a security business, we focus on, we’ll call it, the ‘various domains of warfare’—so cyber, land, air, sea and space ... and we believe that Dataminr could be really the operational glue that pulls all those together and helps solve some of those complex challenges of how those converged threats play out across all those different domains, and just how those organizations can detect, how they can prioritize and how they can respond with the speed and precision that they need.

Was there some sort of internal discussion about there being a gap in the market with this type of solution, or that you’re seeing a ramp up of cyber-physical threats?

As the AI boom drives a massive wave of data center expansion ... we’re kind of entering some unchartered territory, right? Not just in what we’re building, but in the risk. So, billions of dollars are being invested to fuel these AI models. They’re going to help revolutionize the industry. But behind every server rack there’s a new vulnerability, and all of these next-generation data centers isn’t just IT infrastructure. It’s critical infrastructure. Just like in software development, security cannot be an afterthought. It’s got to be built into the DNA of this architecture. As we like to say at World Wide, ‘There’s no naked AI.’ You’ve got to have security. Cyberattacks are going to be targeting GPU clusters. They’re going to be [targeting] drone surveillance, physical sites, climate events, disrupting power grids. So all of that threat landscape is convergent, and tools like Dataminr as we get into this convergence of physical and cyber, it provides us that real-time intelligence.

The new solution, is this something that will be targeted to and is for the midmarket?

Absolutely, and obviously, with our acquisition of Softchoice, they play strongly into the midmarket. We’re pretty excited about that. They do exceptionally well in that space, and we’ll definitely play into the midmarket with this solution, as well as the enterprise space.