>> Announcer: From Miami Beach, Florida it's theCUBE, covering Acronis Global Cyber Summit 2019. Brought to you by Acronis. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE coverage here at the Acronis Global Cyber Summit 2019 in Miami Beach at the Fontainebleau Hotel. Not a bad venue for an event. It's their first inaugural event around cyber protection. Our next guest is a great guest. He's going to go into great detail. Very fun job. Stressful job. Graeme Hackland, CIO of ROKiT Williams Racing Formula One team. Thanks for joining me. >> Thanks Joe. >> Great job you have. I mean, it's high pressure, high stakes, data's involved. You can nerd out on all the tech and it's a part of the business these days. Take a minute to explain the Williams Racing Team history and what are you guys up to these days. >> So Williams, this is Sir Frank Williams' 41st year with this team. 50 years in total he's been in Formula One. Won 16 world championships. Not recently, we want to do that again for him and that's the mission, right? Get up every day wanting to get back to the front of the grid and help Williams to win. I joined them in 2014. I've been 23 years in total in Formula One. I love the industry, the fast pace, everything you describe. There's a bit of stress obviously but I just love the industry and I joined Williams in 2014 to help with the digital transformation and it's been brilliant and now we're not using the transformation word anymore. We're on a digital journey. We've already put a lot of that infrastructure in place, moved to the cloud, and it's just been, it's been brilliant and we've had some success on the track. More recently it's been tough but we'll get back there. >> You know, I just had a conversation with Dan Havens who's the Chief Growth Officer, he's done all of the sports deals. We were talking about, you know, baseball and the other football, European football, and also Formula One. The competitive advantage edge is there in the data. AI is here, machine learning feeds AI, so now do you set up the infrastructure, you get operationalized properly. This is a big job. It's not just loading software. You got to really think about the wholistic system at work. >> That's the great thing, right? We've go to do the infrastructure right. So you've got to get the basics right. But then if we can do a better job with AI, with machine learning, with the analytic tools that are out there than the other teams are doing. We can beat them. We don't have the same funding levels that they do but we got really smart people, and people is our biggest asset. And then the second biggest is data and making sure that the right engineer has the right data at the right time so that they can do their job, so that we can set the fastest pit stop time or that we can challenge the cars in front of us. It is really important, so we put a lot of time and effort into data analytics, but especially video. Video has become huge for us and obviously then, the data size grows massively. But data and being able to analyze your competitors, analyze your own car, your two drivers against each other. There's a huge amount of data that we are dealing with. >> Without giving any secrets away Graeme, talk about some of the data dynamics that you have going on. What is some of the workflows? What are some of the things you're optimize... You said video. Where are you guys looking at? What are some of the key, cool things that you're seeing as an edge opportunity for you? >> So, Formula One team has this life cycle of a Formula One car where you start in aerodynamics, either in a wind tunnel with a physical model or you do virtual wind tunnel with computational fluid dynamics. There's CFD, so that computation power is really important. Then you go into design, CAD design, that really turns it into something that you can make so then we're into manufacturing. Then we got a race engineer, and all the tools that they use to get the optimum out of the car that they're given on a race weekend. And then you feed that back in so that every race were adding performance to the car, and all through the season. We'll add one and a half to two seconds per lap of performance onto that car every season. And so that's a really important loop that you need to be constantly doing. And if you don't, you know, we've had some issues in this year, if you don't get that completely right, you will lose time to your competitors. >> Give me an example where it didn't work out, where you've gone back to the drawing board. >> So, I think there's been, and it's been well publicized, Clay Williams has talked about it. There's been a bit of a gap between the results we were getting in the wind tunnel and the reality that was happening on the track. And so we've had to bring that back and make sure that there was a correlation between the tunnel and the track. And our engineering group will be working really hard on that, so that kind of thing can happen. >> Talk about the engineering backgrounds that are going on behind the scenes. A lot of people look at Formula One's, only the hardcore nerd that are nerding out and geeking out on the sport know that the depth but, what's going on in the engineering front because there's a lot of investment you guys are making on engineering. >> Yeah, and so, Formula One fans love the data. I think they really love to see the data and work with it and, fortunately, the people who run Formula One are opening more of that data to the fans. If you left it to the teams, we wouldn't share it with the fans because then our competitors see it and we see it as a competitor's advantage. But if something's shared for everyone then that's fair. So, I think the fans love to see the data and see what we're doing. What we're trying to look at now is automation. Humans making decisions has been okay up until probably the last couple of years where some errors have been made in strategy, in real-time where you've got a few seconds to make a decision. Are you going to pit? Virtual safety car has just been called. You've got three seconds to make a decision. Sometimes the humans are making the wrong decision. So we see automation, AI, as really having a role in that real-time decision making. But we think AI can help us in our factory. The things that we're making, something happens at the track, and now we have to change that design. We think introducing automation and AI into that process will really help us as well. >> Yeah, sports market, sports teams, and sports franchises, to me, optimize digital transformation or digital journey because the fans want it. >> Graeme: Yeah. >> There's competitive advantage in running the team. There's the player's decision making whether it's baseball or a driver. >> Graeme: Yup. >> And then there's the fans. So, I got to ask ya on, what are you guys thinking about the fan experience because now you got some data opening up, you got visualization, potentially apps that show you that cars in 3D space and some virtual reality potential. >> Yup. >> The old experience was, ooh, there's a car, goes by again, hey we're (giggles) comes by again. So, bringing, extending the digital fan-based experience, what do you guys, what's your view there? >> Oh, there's a huge amount of work happening in Formula One and it's great to see the people who are running Formula One talking about a digital transformation, not just the teams, right. And it was all about the fan experience. We want the fan to feel like they're a part of it. So Williams did a couple of experiments with virtual reality, so that you could either be one of the pit crews, so you could be the person holding the gun, feel the car coming in, and changing the tire. >> That's awesome. >> Or you could have the driver's view. So the cameras that are on the car are above the driver's head so you don't get an accurate view. So we brought that down into the helmet and now you're getting the view of what it's like to be the driver. >> Wow. >> So, there's been a lot of focus on that fan experience and making sure that you're not at a disadvantage sitting in this, you know, at the track, compared to someone who's at home with two televisions or multiple devices that they're tracking the data on. And the GPS data of where the cars are and hearing some of the commentary of why they're making the decisions they are and when the driver's challenge their engineers, I love that bit. So the engineers got all that data, tells the driver we're going to do this strategy and the driver challenges it because they're in the car feeling how the car feels. >> I think you guys have a great opportunity as an industry because, you look at Esports and the gaming culture, the confluence of that experience based product coming to Formula One. >> Graeme: Yup. >> It's just the perfect fit. >> Well, it's gone, the Esports Formula One has gone huge. We run a team as well. Most of the Formula One teams now have an Esports team. And actually, the people who are driving in the Esports teams, their skills are transferrable. I remember one of the competitions a couple of years ago was to win a drive in the simulator. You became a development driver for one of the Formula One teams. And that shows that those skills are transferrable, so it's great. >> Yeah, that's beautiful stuff. All right, I want to get back to the Acronis cyber.. >> Yup. >> Global Cyber Summit 2019. You're here talking to folks, also sharing knowledge, you guys were hit with ransomware. >> Graeme: Yup. >> Not once, but twice. >> Graeme: Yup. >> I think you had just joined, I think at that time before.. >> It was during 2014 when I first joined and we would, I know, we had put as much investment as we could into our cyber security and to our protection. But we had gaps and I think, so the first ransomware that we got hit by was inside our network and it encrypted 50,000 files before we discovered it. Now we were lucky. We were able to recover all the data from back-up, but we knew that, because it had happened in the middle of the day, someone had looked at some websites during their lunch break and within a couple of hours we had discovered it, contained it, corrected it, restored the data. But the second time we got hit, it was an individual on their computer off network, and we lost data. And that's the thing I hate the most. That data is so precious to us. Losing it was really upsetting. And so we went out into the market, how can we make sure that our data is being backed up? But more than that, how can we make sure that backed up data is protected? And there's a number of reasons we want to protect it. We want to protect it from things like ransomware, but also, the thing that people often don't thing about with their data is, how do we make sure that it's not tampered with at any point? So, when we're at the track, and the car's running around the track, we're pushing data locally, inside the network. We're pushing it to the cloud to do computation and we're sending it back to the UK so that engineers at base can work with it. >> Yeah. >> What it someone was in those stream of data tampering with it? >> Yeah. >> And we then had fake data? And as we go to more machine learning and automation, if those decisions are being made on bad data, that's going to be a real problem. So, we wanted to make sure that our data couldn't be tampered with, so we can adopt new technology. So that was really important. But, Williams also have an advanced engineering company, so beyond Formula One, we apply that knowledge and know how, to all sorts of other industries. From healthcare to retail to automotive. We've been helping Unilever with some really interesting projects to make ice cream better and more efficiently and to help with soap powder. We got to make sure that that customer data is never tampered with. If we're going to put technology into road cars, that's a very different challenge to Formula One. >> John: Yeah. >> We got to make sure that, that whole, the IP chain, how we develop that technology can be proven and isn't tampered with. >> It's interesting, supply chain concepts data protection merging together. Data protection used to be thought after.. Oh, we've got a design. Well let's brush up, we'll get back it, bolt it on. Not anymore. >> Now having to build it into the solutions up front. As we're preparing technology for customers, we're having to make sure that we're thinking about the data challenge. So if it's in a car, so we did battery technology, we won the supply for the first ever gas to electric model, right. As that car is driving around, there's going to be data that's important around the health of the battery. >> John: Yeah. >> And information that is going to be needed by the driver, but also for later for when they're doing the servicing on the car. We got to make sure that that data is protected properly. >> You guys are pushing the envelope on instrumentation, sensors, data, real-time telemetry? >> To be honest, Formula One has always been like that. We put our first data logger in 1979 on a Formula One car. Honestly, it's been an IOT device since then. (laughs) It's not a new thing for F Ones. I think we are really experienced. Our electronics group are real experienced in how to protect that data as it comes off the car and we've applied that knowledge to road cars as well. >> Well you, what's great about you guys and the whole industry is that, that innovation for the sport is now translating as a benefit for society. >> Exactly. >> And I think that is really kind of a, I think, an example of where innovation can come from. Places you least expect it. The people doing hard work pays off. >> It always worried me that Formula One, we spend all the money we spend, right, hundred million pounds, three hundred million pounds per year. And at the end of the year, the product that we created gets retired and we create a whole new product. It always worried me that that technology wasn't reused. Williams are reusing it. You know, we take the carbon fiber that we use to protect a driver in a Formula One car. We've now applied that to babies in hospitals when they get moved around. We built a carbon fiber unit that moves them around. Aerodynamics design, we've applied to fridges to make them more efficient. If you've got an open fridge, the cold air doesn't come out into the aisle of the supermarket. We push it back into the fridges. I love that. Reuse, taking loose end leaf batteries and putting them into a unit that you bought on the side of a house and it helps to power the house over night. >> You know, it's interesting Graeme, you mentioned digital transformation versus digital journey, you guys are operationalize it as it's used. >> Graeme: Exactly. >> Difference, there's nuance but transformation. You have yet transformed. >> Graeme: Yup. >> You guys up transformed so you're on a journey. I got to ask you, what is some learnings in your operationalize digital? I mean, obviously you got your sport, but now it's translating out to other areas. What's the big learnings that you take away from, as a professional and as an individual in the industry, from all this? >> I think, initially, we were quite conservative and we only went with big players that we were convinced were going to be around in three to five years. I think, there's a lot more established cloud providers now but early on we only went with the big guys because we wanted to make sure we could get our data out. If they disappeared, we weren't going to lose our data. I think what the partnership with Acronis and other partnerships we've done has helped us to be more aggressive in terms of our approach towards CAD vendors. We can now take risks with a smaller player. We've got a really niche product but it's something that could give us a competitive advantage for half a season, three, four races sometimes. We'd go for it. Whereas, I think we were a bit conservative at first. I think all CIOs have to think about what's their appetite for risk. We did a really good process of mapping that out, discussing it all the way to board level. What exactly are we prepared to risk? There's some things, you know, car data, we're just not prepared to risk that. >> Yeah. >> But there are some things that we can afford to take risks with. And I've talked to CIOs at finance institutes, they're starting to take risks now. There's core data that they won't be able to, either by regulation or just doesn't make sense. But there's a lot you can commoditize and put out into the cloud. >> And if you have a cyber protection foundation, you can take those risks. >> Graeme: Exactly. >> You don't want to be looking over your shoulder worrying. >> Because you own the data. And sometimes when you go with a cloud provider, it feels almost like they own the data. But when you've got a partnership like the one we have with Acronis, we know that we own the data. We're backing that data away from the cloud vendor so we can always get it back. >> Graeme, thanks so much for the insight. Love this conversation. I think it's really innovative, cutting edge, and great fun to talk about. Thanks for coming on theCUBE, appreciate it. >> Thank you very much, cheers. >> CUBE coverage here at Miami Beach at the Fontainebleau Hotel for Acronis Global Cyber Security 2019 Summit, I'm John Ferrier, stay with us for more CUBE day two coverage after this short break. (fun music)