>> Narrator: Live from Washington D.C. It's the Cube, covering AWS Public Sector Summit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back everyone, to the Cube's live coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit here in our nations capitol. I'm your host Rebecca Knight, along with my cohost John Furrier. We have Allison Robinson joining us, she is the AVP IT operations at Cal Poly University. Thanks so much for coming on the Cube. >> Thank you for having me. >> So, talk about your big announcement yesterday in terms of ground station. This is one of John's favorite topics, so tell us more about what you announced. >> So yesterday there was an announcement that Cal Poly through our digital transformation hub, and that hub exists to do innovated things with the greater good through the public sector and helping with challenges that they're trying to learn more about and solve problems. And so, through that group, we announced the initiative to do cube satellite in connection with ground station at AWS, to be able to help people that use these satellites be able to test these satellites and collect data and share it ultimately, with others. 'Cause there's a problem, they're not expensive satellites but that means you don't have a lot of money to work with. And so to be able to test and make sure your communications are good and the infrastructure is there, is kind of missing in the whole environment. And now, that's going to be solved. >> And you're able to get many more shots and pay as you go, not necessarily have to, as you said, put up your own satellite yourself. >> Exactly, you can put the satellite up. The problem was the infrastructure to communicate back with it. So, the ground station, those antenna are approximately located to AWS regions. So you can now bring the data, process it, store it, analyze it, and then ultimately share it. That, again, being for the public good, we want to make sure the date we're collecting is in the AWS registry, data set registry. So that people can access that information, that's important. >> Allison, talk about the relationship with AWS, how did it get started? I mean your involved with these cool projects like ground station, which I'm a big fan of. 'Cause I think the impact to IOT, just forest fires in California could be a real... >> Allison: Right. >> Saver right there. Just using data, back hauling data for whatever is going to be a great thing. But you got a relationship with AWS, that goes beyond, not just ground station, there's other things going on. Take a minute to explain the relationship with AWS. >> So, the vice president of IT at Cal Poly, Bill Britton, began his position with Cal Poly about two years ago. And took a look at the data center and had to ask the question, do we invest here on prem or do we have to look for something else? And that began the conversation of, we need to do something about our data center, it looks like Amazon has the tools we need to modernize our technical environment. Both in how we work, how people work, our processes and our technical infrastructure. And so, that began the work of, we announced two years ago, I didn't work for Cal Poly yet. They announced there, the President and Bill announced that we were all in. The data center was going to AWS. I happened to be presenting on a different topic, and we connected there, and a year later, we made a connection and I have been at Cal Poly now for a year to help them get to the AWS data center. >> Lot of smart people Cal Poly, I know, I looked at the university. Great computer science, great everything. You guys got a lot of smart people, so what was it like to actually, as this starts to evolve, the progression of the modernization. Take us through where you guys are on progress, what are some of the cool things going on. What's the result of this shift? What are some of the notable highlights? >> It's really exciting, because we really did take an approach of we've got to look at, not just as AWS and a new tool. Which you have to work so differently, in dev ops and agily. We said okay, then we've got to figure out our processes to be able to work that way. We have to change as an organization. So we were more structured around those technical silos. And we became a service management group for like, who do we serve and what are they trying to accomplish? And that's the focus of everything we do. So from idea to service we have a process to handle to that. And AWS, we're all in on their tools too.6 So they completely facilitate that process6. >> You have a lot of stake holders, so you have impact at the student body level, faculty, institution overall.6 >> Right. >> What are some of the game changers that you see? Obviously the ground station, you got great R and D coming in with Amazon. What's the impact? >> The digital transformation hub is part of the IT organization as well. And our community outreach and giving students actual hands on experience to work with the public sector, whether it be law enforcement, or maybe a city trying to deal with a homeless situation. They actually are engaged with professionals and learning about problems and solutions. And in ten weeks, we work on quarters, and our quarters are ten weeks, which align perfectly to exactly how long it takes an engagement with the digital hub to find what's possible in terms of solutions to problems. >> So talk about the students of today. I mean, we hear a lot about them. And I want to hear you, you're teaching them, you're helping to educate this new generation of people who we hope will make huge, great waves in industry, private industry, as well as state, local, and the federal government. >> Allison: Right. >> What do you see as their strengths, their weaknesses, and what are they looking at in terms of building careers? >> You know, they, I really do love working with the students. They are incredible. It makes me wonder sometimes, I don't think I'd get into college now, times have changed. And they really care, they care, that's why the public, being able to work through these to serve the greater good of the public and share that data after actually means so much more to them. Than if it were just a class project, because they want to make a difference. They care about social justice and making sure that we're green and efficient with how we use our earth resources. And so this maps around a lot of the challenges. The homelessness that I mentioned before, and how we've worked with that. Or making sure that we can make cities safer. They care about that deeply. And they have access to a lot of resources. This past fall's incoming class was born in the year 2000. They've never not known a time with computers. They do math homework, they're not reading, they're actually doing homework on their phones. Their very mobilely engaged, very digitally engaged. And we're going to see wonderful things from them, because they think so differently about these things. >> It sounds as though the education that you're providing is very practical, in the sense that you're having your students work with the state and local governments on these issues like homelessness and climate change. Can you talk about some of the projects that their doing? >> So our mantra is learn by doing. And you come in and you are admitted to a major. And you begin working in that major right away. Every student finishes their last quarter with a senior project. And you actually produce an outcome and have something you can talk about, both as the product and the process to get there. I was recently invited to the senior projects showcase for the graphic arts department. And, in common, they all had technology. And some where, one of the students we had just contracted for some software, and thank you so much you helped make the difference with that. So that's neat, when you get to see to make that difference. But even though it's graphic arts, in every way technology was key to what they do. And they have, really, you know students come from some great backgrounds too, where they've had some great access to information and technology and really think differently about it. Engineering students are winning awards and doing really great things. So it's fun to see and be a part of. Great energy. >> What about the culture within your department itself? I mean, you're not only educating the next generation but you're also doing research yourself. Can you talk about, particularly, as a partner, as working so closely with AWS, which has such a famous culture of innovation and of taking risks and tolerating failure, because the more failures you'll have, you'll ultimately get there someday. So can you talk a little bit about the culture within Cal Poly? >> It's hard, because IT people are usually very analytical and there's a right and a wrong. So that sense of it's okay to get it wrong, isn't popular generally. So, that starts with me, I had to get up and say we may not get it right, but rarely do we get it wrong. We might get parts of it wrong, we adjust. It's okay to get it wrong. We've got to figure things out, all of this is new. And as I've been there longer and really work with people through different things, they believe that from me now. There's not judgment. I once worked at a place where it'd go on your permanent record. Well, try and get somebody to try something innovated if you have a problem and it goes on your permanent record. So I don't have that now. >> Rebecca: It'd be a career ender. >> Yeah. >> Bill: Yeah. >> I have a lot of people getting it, and we're trying it. And you can work so fast in the AWS environment, that if it isn't right, blow it away and start over again. >> In some organization you were a renegade if you tried something new. You know, oh my God, don't touch that third rail. >> Allison: Yeah. >> Here, you guys are doing, it's progressive in the sense that you're trying new things. >> Learn by doing is a call to action, but it also gives you that space to try. >> Bill: Yeah, be creative. >> It's learning. >> What's your impression of the show here in DC? Obviously, it's our fourth year covering public sector. I've been following them a couple years earlier, but the first four years covering live broadcasting, reporting. But, besides the growth, what's your takeaway? >> I need to be cloned. (laughter) >> There are so many things happening here. >> You need a digital twin. >> There you go. >> You can solve that, Allison. >> There's going to be a lot of people that say, no don't clone her, don't do it. But there's so much information and the innovation that AWS does. Sometimes it's like exciting to hear, and it's like oh where was that a month ago when we were working on that? So we just have to stay on our toes and we have to keep engaged with AWS and what they're doing and what we can use from them to make our environment better. And move even faster. >> You got to keep, keeping pace is also a hard thing. Because they're introducing so many new things. At amazon. We're very fortunate again in our partnership, actually that does translate into the IT operations organization. That we've been working with them on some services that they do. We can tell them, hey this isn't quite working, and they honestly listen to us. And deliver what they ask on a road map, sometimes sooner than later too. So it's been a great partnership. >> That's interesting, a company that actually delivers on what you ask for. >> Exactly, exactly. And we have scaled, you know it's a small town there's 24,000 students, you have your faculty and staff. So when we try something with them, we have the opportunity for big impacts right away. >> That's awesome, well, congratulations, great work >> Thank you. >> On the DX hubs fascinating ground station. Great projects, students and you guys to play around and help that grow. Because that's going to be a great service. >> Yes, we're excited. We can't wait to get going. >> Rebecca: Thanks for coming the Cube Allison. >> Thank you. >> We will have more of the Cubes live coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit here in Washington DC. Stay tuned. (upbeat beat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Splunk.conf19, brought to you by Splunk. >> Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here inside for Splunk.conf, their 10th-year conference. We've been here seven years. I'm John Furrier, the host. Our next guest is Sherrie Caltagirone, founder and executive director of the Global Emancipation Network, a cutting-edge company and organization connecting different groups together to fight that battle combating human trafficking with the power of data analytics. We're in a digital world. Sherrie, thanks for coming in. >> Thank you so much for having me. >> So love your mission. This is really close to my heart in terms of what you're doing because with digital technologies, there's a unification theme here at Splunk, unifying data sets, you hear on the keynotes. You guys got a shout-out on the keynote, congratulations. >> Sherrie: We did, thank you. >> So unifying data can help fight cybersecurity, fight the bad guys, but also there's other areas where unification comes in. This is what you're doing. Take a minute to explain the Global Emancipation Network. >> Yeah, thank you. So what we do is we are a data analytics and intelligence nonprofit, dedicated to countering all forms of human trafficking, whether it's labor trafficking, sex trafficking, or any of the sub types, men, women, and children all over the world. So when you think about that, what that really means is that we interact with thousands of stakeholders across law enforcement, governments, nonprofits, academia, and then private sector as well. And all of those essentially act as data silos for human trafficking data. And when you think about that as trafficking as a data problem or you tackle it as a data problem, what that really means is that you have to have a technology and data-led solution in order to solve the problem. So that's really our mission here is to bring together all of those stakeholders, give them easy access to tools that can help improve their counter posture. >> And where are you guys based and how big is the organization? What's the status? Give a quick plug for where you guys are at and what the current focus is. >> Yeah, perfect, so I am based in San Luis Obispo, California. We have just started a brand new trafficking investigations hub out at Cal Poly there. They're a fantastic organization whose motto is learn by doing, and so we are taking the trafficking problem and the tangential other issues, so like we mentioned, cyber crime, wildlife trafficking, drugs trafficking, all of this sort of has a criminal convergence around it and applying technology, and particularly Splunk, to that. >> Yeah, and I just want to make a note 'cause I think it's important to mention. Cal Poly's doing some cutting-edge work. Alison Robinson, Bill Britton, who runs the program over there, they got a great organization. They're doing a lot of data-oriented from media analysis, data, big focus there. Cal Poly quite a big organization. >> They are, and they're doing some wonderful things. AWS just started an innovation hub called the DX Hub there that we are a part of, really trying to tackle these really meaty problems here that are very data-centric and technology-centric. And Cal Poly's the best place to do that. >> Great, let's get into some of the details. One of the things around the news, obviously seeing Mark Zuckerberg doing the tour, Capitol Hill, DC, Georgetown, free speech, data. Facebook has been kind of blamed for breaking democracy. At the same time, it's a platform. They don't consider themselves as an editorial outlet. My personal opinion, they are, but they hide behind that platform. So bad things have happened, good things can happen. So you're seeing technology kind of being pigeonholed as bad. Tech for bad, there's also a tech for good. Pat Gelsinger, the CEO of VMware, publicly said technology's neutral. We humans can shape it. So you guys are looking at it from shaping it for good. How are you doing it? What are some of the things that are going on technically from a business standpoint that is shaping and unifying the data? >> Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely certain that technology has facilitated human trafficking and other ills throughout the world. It's a way that people bring their product, in this case, sadly, human beings, to the market to reach buyers, right? And technology absolutely facilitates that. But, as you mentioned, we can use that against them. So actually here at Conf we are bringing together for a first time the partnership that we did with Splunk for Good, Accenture, and Global Emancipation Network to help automatically classify and score risky businesses, content, ads, and individuals there to help not only with mitigating risk and liability for the private sector, whether it's social media giants or if it's transportation, hospitality, you name it, but also help ease the burden of content moderators. And that's the other side of it. So when you live in this space day in and day out, you really exact a mental toll here. It's really damaging to the individual who sits and reads this material and views photos over and over again. So using technology is a way to automate some of those investigations, and the identification of that content could be helpful in a variety of ways. >> In a way, it's a whole other adversary formula to try to identify. One of the things that Splunk, as we've been here at Splunk Conference, they've been about data from day one. A lot of data and then grew from there, and they have this platform. It's a data problem, and so one of the things that we're seeing here is diverse data, getting at more data makes AI smarter, makes things smarter. But that's hard. Diverse data might be in different data sets or silos, different groups. Sharing data's important, so getting that diverse data, how difficult is it for you guys? Because the bad guys can hide. They're hiding in from Craigslist to social platforms. You name it, they're everywhere. How do you get the data? What's the cutting-edge ingestion? Where are the shadows? Where are the blind spots? How do you guys look at that? Because it's only getting bigger. >> Absolutely, so we do it through a variety of different ways. We absolutely see gathering and aggregating and machining data the most central thing to what we do at Global Emancipation Network. So we have a coalition, really, of organizations that we host their scrapers and crawlers on and we run it through our ingestion pipeline. And we are partnered with Microsoft and AWS to store that data, but everything goes through Splunk as well. So what is that data, really? It's data on the open web, it's on the deep web. We have partners as well who look at the dark web, too, so Recorded Future, who's here at Conf, DeepL as well. So there's lots of different things on that. Now, honestly, the data that's available on the internet is easy for us to get to. It's easy enough to create a scraper and crawler, to even create an authenticated scraper behind a paywall, right? The harder thing is those privately held data sets that are in all of those silos that are in a million different data formats with all kinds of different fields and whatnot. So that is where it's a little bit more of a manual lift. We're always looking at new technologies to machine PDFs and that sort of thing as well. >> One of the things that I love about this business we're on, the wave we're on, we're in a digital media business, is that we're in pursuit of the truth. Trust, truth is a big part of what we do. We talk to people, get the data. You guys are doing something really compelling. You're classifying evil. Okay, this is a topic of your talk track here. Classifying evil, combating human trafficking with the power of data analytics. This is actually super important. Could you share why, for people that aren't following inside the ropes of this problem, why is it such a big problem to classify evil? Why isn't it so easy to do? What's the big story? What should people know about this challenge? >> Yeah, well, human trafficking is actually the second-most profitable crime in the world. It's the fastest-growing crime. So our best estimates are that there's somewhere between 20 million and 45 million people currently enslaved around the world. That's a population the size of Spain. That's nothing that an individual, or even a small army of investigators can handle. And when you think about the content that each of those produce or the traffickers are producing in order to advertise the services of those, it's way beyond the ability of any one organization or even, like I said, an army of them, to manage. And so what we need to do then is to be able to find the signal in the noise here. And there is a lot of noise. Even if you're looking at sex trafficking, particularly, there's consensual sex work or there's other things that are a little bit more in that arena, but we want to find that that is actually engaging in human trafficking. The talk that you mentioned that we're doing is actually a fantastic use case. This is what we did with Splunk for Good and Accenture. We were actually looking at doing a deep dive into the illicit massage industry in the US, and there are likely over 10,000 illicit massage businesses in the US. And those businesses, massages and spas, that are actually just a front for being a brothel, essentially. And it generates $2 billion a year. We're talking about a major industry here, and in that is a very large component of human trafficking. There's a very clear pipeline between Korea, China, down to New York and then being placed there. So what we ended up needing to do then, and again, we were going across data silos here, looking at state-owned data, whether it was license applications, arrest filings, legal cases, that sort of thing, down into the textual advertisements, so doing NLP work with weighted lexicons and really assigning a risk score to individual massage businesses to massage therapist business owners and then, again, to that content. So looking, again, how can we create a classifier to identify evil? >> It's interesting, I think about when you're talking about this is a business. This is a business model, this business continuity. There's a supply chain. This is a bona fide, underground, or overt business process. >> Yeah, absolutely, and you're right on that too that it is actually overt because at this point, traffickers actually operate with impunity for the most part. So actually framing it that way, as a market economy, whether it's shadowy and a little bit more in the black market or completely out in the open, it really helps us frame our identification, how we can manage disruptions, who need to be the stakeholders at the table for us in order to have a wider impact rather than just whack-a-mole. >> I was just talking with Sonia, one of our producers, around inclusiveness and this is so obviously a human passion issue. Why don't we just solve it? I mean, why doesn't someone like the elite class or world organization, just Davos, and people just say they're staring at this problem. Why don't they just say, "Hey, this is evil. "Let's just get rid of it." What's the-- >> Well, we're working on it, John, but the good thing is, and you're absolutely right, that there are a number of organizations who are actually working on it. So not just us, there's some other amazing nonprofits. But the tech sector's actually starting to come to the table as well, whether it's Splunk, it's Microsoft, it's AWS, it's Intel, IBM, Accenture. People are really waking up to how damaging this actually is, the impact that it has on GDP, the way that we're particularly needing to protect vulnerable populations, LGBTQ youth, children in foster care, indigenous populations, refugees, conflict zones. So you're absolutely right. I think, given the right tools and technology, and the awareness that needs to happen on the global stage, we will be able to significantly shrink this problem. >> It's classic arbitrage. If I'm a bad guy, you take advantage of the systematic problems of what's in place, so the current situation. Sounds like siloed groups somewhat funded, not mega-funded. This group over here, disconnect between communications. So you guys are, from what I could tell, pulling everyone together to kind of create a control plane of data to share information to kind of get a more holistic view of everything. >> Yeah, that's exactly it. Trying to do it at scale, at that. So I mentioned that at first we were looking at the illicit massage sector. We're moving over to the social media to look again at the recruitment side and content. And the financial sector is really the common thread that runs through all of it. So being able to identify, taking it back to a general use case here from cyber security, just indicators as well, indicators of compromise, but in our case, these are just words and lexicons, dollar values, things like that, down to behavioral analytics and patterns of behavior, whether people are moving, operating as call centers, network-like behavior, things that are really indicative of trafficking. And making sure that all of those silos understand that, are sharing the data they can, that's not overly sensitive, and making sure that we work together. >> Sherrie, you mentioned AWS. Teresa Carlson, I know she's super passionate about this. She's a leader. Cal Poly, we mentioned that. Splunk, you mentioned, how is Splunk involved? Are they the core technology behind this? Are they powering the-- >> They are, yeah, Splunk was actually with us from day one. We sat at a meeting, actually, at Microsoft and we were really just white boarding. What does this look like? How can we bring Splunk to bear on this problem? And so Splunk for Good, we're part of their pledge, the $10 million pledge over 10 years, and it's been amazing. So after we ingest all of our data, no matter what the data source is, whatever it looks like, and we deal with the ugliest and most unstructured data ever, and Splunk is really the only tool that we looked at that was able to deal with that. So everything goes through Splunk. From there, we're doing a series of external API calls that can really help us enrich that data, add correlations, whether it's spatial data, network analysis, cryptocurrency analysis, public records look-ups, a variety of things. But Splunk is at the heart. >> So I got to ask you, honestly, as this new architecture comes into play for attacking this big problem that you guys are doing, as someone who's not involved in that area, I get wow, spooked out by that. I'm like, "Wow, this is really bad." How can people help? What can people do either in their daily lives, whether it's how they handle their data, observations, donations, involvement? How do people get involved? What do you guys see as some areas that could be collaborating with? What do you guys need? How do people get involved? >> Yeah, one that's big for me is I would love to be able to sit in an interview like this, or go about my daily life, and know that what I am wearing or the things that I'm interacting with, my phone, my computer, weren't built from the hands of slave labor. And at this point, I really can't. So one thing that everybody can do is demand of the people that they are purchasing from that they're doing so in a socially viable and responsible way. So looking at supply chain management as well, and auditing specifically for human trafficking. We have sort of the certified, fair-trade certified organic seals. We need something like that for human trafficking. And that's something that we, the people, can demand. >> I think you're on the right track with that. I see a big business model wave where consumer purchasing power can be shifted to people who make the investments in those areas. So I think it's a big opportunity. It's kind of a new e-commerce, data-driven, social-impact-oriented economy. >> Yep, and you can see more and more, investment firms are becoming more interested in making socially responsible investments. And we just heard Splunk announce their $100 million social innovation fund as well. And I'm sure that human trafficking is going to be part of that awareness. >> Well, I'll tell you one of the things that's inspirational to me personally is that you're starting to see power and money come into helping these causes. My friend, Scott Tierney, just started a venture capital firm called Valo Ventures in Palo Alto. And they're for-profit, social impact investors. So they see a business model shift where people are getting behind these new things. I think your work is awesome, thank you. >> Yeah, thank you so much, I appreciate it. >> Thanks for coming on. Congratulations on the shout-out on the keynote. Appreciate it. The Global Emancipation Network, check them out. They're in San Luis Obispo, California. Get involved. This is theCUBE with bringing you the signal from the noise here at .conf. I'm John Furrier, back with more after this short break. (upbeat music)