>>Mhm. >>What? >>Hello and welcome to today's session of the 2021 AWS Global public sector partner awards for today's award for the award of best partner transformation, best global expansion. I'm your host Natalie ehrlich and now I'm very pleased to introduce you to our next guest. They are James Lester Global Managing Director, public Safety attic censure. And Lauren a thoroughly director of performance analytics and research of the Seattle Police Department. Welcome gentlemen, it's wonderful to have you on the program. >>Thanks for having us >>terrific. Well, we're going to talk a lot about data and a lot about public safety and how, you know, data analytics analytics is making a big impact um in the public safety world. So do tell us I'd like to start with you James. Uh tell us how X enters intelligent public safety platform turns data into a strategic asset. >>Thanks Natalie. Well, the intelligent public safety platform is all about combining different data sets together and taking a platform approach to using data within public safety. What it does is it allows us to bring a whole host of different types of data together in one place, put that through a series of different analytical transactions and then visualize that information back to where however within the public safety environment needs it and really does four key things. One is, it helps with situational awareness, helps the officer understand the situation that they're in and gives them insight to help support and guide them. Secondly it helps enhance investigations. So how do you join those dots? How do you help navigate and speed up complex investigations by better understanding a range of data sets. And thirdly it really helps with force management and understanding the behavior and the activities within the force and how best to use those critical assets of police officers and police staff themselves. And then finally what it does is it really looks at digital evidence management. How do you actually manage data effectively as an asset within the force? So those are the four key things. And certainly with our work at Seattle we've really focused on that force management area. >>Yeah. Thanks for mentioning that. Now let's shift to Lauren tell us how has I PSP you know, really helped your staff make some key contributions towards public safety in the city of Seattle. >>Yeah. Thanks. Uh so you know I think our business intelligence journey started maybe a little in advance of the I. P. S. P. With our partnership With accenture on the data analytics platform. And we've been taking that, say my PSP approach since 2015 as part of our efforts to comply with a federal consent decree. So, you know, I think what what we probably don't understand necessarily is that most police departments build sort of purpose built source systems to onboard data and make good use of them. But that doesn't necessarily mean that that data is readily available. So, um, you know, we've been able to demonstrate compliance with the elements of a settlement agreement for our consent decree, but we've also been able to do a whole host of research projects designed to better understand how police operate in the criminal logical environment, how they perform and um, and really make the best use of those assets as we have them deployed around the city doing law enforcement work. >>Terrific. Now, James, let's shift to you one of the kind of key dilemmas here in the sectors. You know, how can you utilize these um, new technologies in policing, um, and law enforcement while still building trust with the public? >>Absolutely. I mean, I do think that it is critical that public safety agencies are able to use the benefits of new technology, criminals are using technology in all sorts of different ways. Uh and it's important that policing and public safety organizations are able to exploit the advantages that we now see through technology and the ability to understand and analyze data. But equally, it's critical that these implemented in ways that engage and involve the public, that the way in which the analytics and analysis is conducted is open and transparent, so people understand how the data is being used, uh and also that officers themselves are part of the process when these tools are built and developed, so they gain a thorough understanding of how to use them and how to implement them. So, being open and transparent in the way that these platforms are built is absolutely critical. >>Yeah, that's an excellent point because clearly bad actors are already using data. Um, so we might as well use it to help, you know, the good actors out there and help the public. So in your opinion, Lauren, um, you know, what is the next phase of this kind of model? Um, what are you hoping to do next with this kind of technology? >>So as we use this technology as we understand more about it, we're really building data curiosity within the management group at SPD. So really sort of, I would say the first phase of a business intelligence platform in policing is about orienting people to the problem, how many of these things happen at what time and where do they happen around the city? And then beginning to build better questions from the people who are actually doing the business of delivering police service in the city and the future of that, I think is taking that critical feedback and understanding how to respond with really more intelligence services, predictive services that help to kind of cut through that just general descriptive noise and provide insights to the operation in a city that has About 900,000 dispatches in a year. It's difficult to pinpoint which dispatches are of interest to police managers, which crimes which calls may be of interest to the city at large as they manage public safety and risk management. And so are, you know, sort of future development agenda. Our road map, if you will for the next several years is really focused on developing intelligent processes that make use of all of that data, boil it down to what's critically important and help direct people who are most familiar with the operation. To those uh those events, those critical pieces of insight that might be helpful in allowing them to make better management decisions. >>Yeah. And what what are some of the key areas that you find this platform can be effective in terms of uh you know public safety, certain criminal activities James. >>Um I think the PSP has a wide range of applications so certainly looking at how we can bring a whole range of data together that previously has maybe been locked away in individual silos or separate systems. So public safety agencies are really able to understand what they know and the information that they have and make it much easier to access and understand that information. Um I also think it's allowing us to perform levels of analytics and therefore insight on those data sets, which previously public safety agencies have have struggled to do. Um And in the case of Seattle focusing on the uh force management aspect, I think it's helped them understand the activities and behavior of their workforce um in context and in relation to other events and other activities to a much greater depth than they've been able to do previously. >>Terrific. Well, Lauren obviously, you know, this was a really tough year with Covid. What impact did the pandemic have on your operations and some of your more modern policing efforts? >>Oh, I mean, obviously it radically changed the way that we deploy forces in the organization beginning early in March. Uh you know, like most of the world, we all moved home trying to keep up the pace of development and continue to manage the operation. But as that was happening, you know, people are still living their lives out in the world and out in the city. So we pretty quickly found ourselves trying to adapt to that new use of public spaces, trying to identify problems in an environment that really doesn't look anything like the previous couple of years that we were working in, uh and uh, you know, data and and really sort of the availability of technology that helps too identify what's new and what's interesting and rapidly develop those insights and get them available for police managers was critical and helping us identify things like trends in potential exposure events. So being able to identify uh, you know, just exactly how many calls involve the use of personal protective equipment, use that to forecast potential exposure for our workforce. Be able to track exposure reports in the field to be able to determine whether there are staffing concerns that need to be considered. Uh and all of that. Uh you know, we're able to pretty rapidly prototype and deploy dashboards and tools that help folks, especially the command staff, have kind of a global sense for how the operation is functioning as the environment is literally shifting underneath them as uh, you know, uh the use of public spaces is changing and as dispatch procedures are changing as public policy is changing related to, you know, things like jail booking availability and public health and safety policies. The department was able to stay on top of those key metrics and really make sort of the best minute by minute decisions based in the data. And that's really not something that's been available, uh You know, without sort of the ready availability of data at your fingertips and the ability to rapidly prototype things that direct people to what's important. >>Yeah, thank you for that. Now, James, I'd love to hear your comments on that. I mean, has the pandemic altered or, you know, given you any kind of fresh perspective on uh you know, modern policing efforts using these kinds of platforms? >>Well, I think that the pandemic has shown the importance of using data in new and different ways. I mean, one thing the pandemic certainly did was see a shift in in crime types. You know, traditional street based volume crime declined, where we saw increases in cyber and online crime. And therefore the flexibility that police services have had to have in order to shift how they combat changing crime types has meant that they've had to be able to use data as they say, in new and different ways. And think about how can they be more disruptive in their tactics? How can they get new types of insight and really platforms like the intelligent public safety platform help them become much more flexible and much more nimble and that's certainly something that's been required as a result of the pandemic. >>Yeah, that's really great to hear. Um you know, Lauren going to you, I'd love to hear how specifically I PSP was able to help you uh you know, the Seattle Police department as well as statewide inquiries and end investigations. What kind of enhancements were you able to receive from that? >>Uh Well, you know, I mean in terms of investigations, uh the way that Seattle deploys the intelligent public safety platform, our focus is really primarily on deployment of resources that force management, the accountability, piece of things. And so from our perspective, the ability to onboard new data sources quickly uh and make use of that information in a kind of a rapid sort of responsive function was really critical for us but um you know, certainly and I think as as most communities are exploring new ways of approaching community safety, uh the intelligent public safety platform uh for us was really effective in being able to answer those, those questions that are coming up as as people are reforming the way that policing is deployed in their communities, were able to reach out and see just exactly how many hours are spent on one particular function over another, something that perhaps could be available for a co responder model, or take a look at, you know, this sort of natural experiment that we have out in our criminal logical environment as people are using spaces differently. And as we are approaching enforcement policy differently, being able to take a look at what are the effects of perhaps not arresting people for certain types of crime? Do we see some displacement of those effects across different crime types? Do we see an increase in harm in other areas of the operation? Have we seen you know increases in one particular crime type while another one declines? How is the environment responding these rapid changes and what really is a natural experiment occurring out in the world? >>Yeah I mean it's really incredible um Having all that data at our fingertips and really being able to utilize it to have a fuller perspective of what's really happening right? What what do you think James? >>Yeah. I mean I think being able to really utilize different data sets is something that police forces are seeing to become more and more important. Um They're recognizing that becoming increasingly data lead can really help improve their performance. Um And the challenge to date has really been how do we bring those data sets together but not then require police officers to way through reams and reams of data. I mean the volumes of data now that organizations are having to manage is huge. And so really the power of the I. P. S. P. Is being able to filter through all of that data and really deliver actionable insight. So something that the police officer can go and do something with and really make a difference around. Um And that's something that that's absolutely critical. And modern day policing is increasingly having this data driven evidence based approach to help make it far more effective and really focused on the needs of its citizens. >>Yeah and as you mentioned, I mean the algorithms are really driving this you know, um giving us these actionable insights but how can we ensure that they're acting fairly to all the stakeholders James. I'd like you to answer this please. >>Um Absolutely. I mean, trust and confidence within policing is absolutely paramount. Uh and whilst the use of these sorts of tools, I think is critical to helping keep communities in the public safe. It's very important that these tools are deployed in an open transparent way. And part of that is understanding the algorithms, making sure that algorithmic fairness is built in so that these are tested and any sort of bias or unintended consequences are understood and known and factored in to the way in which the tools are both built and used. Um, and then on top of that, I think it's open, it's important that these are open and transparent, that it's clear how and why departments are using these technologies. And it's also critical that the officers using them are trained and understood how to use them and how to use the insights that they're starting to deliver. >>Yeah, and thanks for mentioning that Lauren, what kind of training are you providing your staff at the Seattle police department And you know, how do you see this evolving in the next few years >>with regard to algorithmic fairness, what kind of training along those lines or training >>with the I. P. S. P. And all these other kinds of technologies that you're embracing now to help with your public safety initiatives? >>Well, you know, I think one of the one of the real benefits to becoming an evidence based organization, a truly evidence led organization is that you don't have to train folks uh to use data. What you have to do is leverage data to make it work and be really infused with their everyday operations. So we, you know, we have police officers and we have managers and we have commanders and they've got a very complex set of tasks that they've been trained to work with. It's really sort of our mission to be trained in, how to identify uh you know, the correct UX UI design, how to make sure that the insights that are being directed to those folks are really tailored to the business they're operating. And so to that extent, the analytical staff that we have is really focused on sort of continuous improvement and constant learning about how we can be mindful of things like bias and the algorithms and the various systems that we're deploying uh and also be up to date on the latest and how police operations really are sort of deployed around the city and ways that we can infuse those various management functions or those police service functions with data and analytics that are just naturally working with people's business sense and they're uh really sort of primary function, which is the delivery of police service >>terrific. Well, James lastly with you um just real quick you know, what are your thoughts in terms of being able to extend the power of I. P. S. P. Beyonce Seattle uh in the broader United States? >>Well I mean I think my PSP has huge applicability to any public safety agency in in the US and beyond and we're already seeing other agencies around the world interested in using it and deploying it um Where they basically want to get uh and be able to utilize a wider range of data where they want to be able to drive greater insight into that that data set um Where they want to be confident in deploying open and fair algorithms um to really make a difference. Um And if we to take the the specific example of the U. S. And the work that we've done with Seattle then I think tools like the intention public safety platform have a huge part to play in the wider reimagining of policing within the US in understanding officer and departmental behavior and actually opening up and sharing information with citizens that increased levels of trust and transparency between public safety agencies and the communities and citizens that they serve. >>And you know, on that note, do you think that I PSP is useful in terms of collaboration efforts, you know, with other police departments, perhaps in other states? Um you know or just just as a global national effort. Lauren, do you see that kind of potential in the future? >>Yeah and actually we do that now. So one of the really sort of powerful things about having all of this data at your fingertips and I would say having this kind of awesome responsibility of being the steward of this type of asset for the community. Um and and really sort of for the industry at large is that we're able to take the data and rapidly develop new research projects with researchers around the world. So the Seattle Police Department maintains a network of about I think we're up to about 55 current researchers and institutions. I think we've got about 33, institutions around the world. People really working on real time problems related to the things that matter to our community right now. And having this data available at our fingertips allows us to rapidly develop data sources. We can actually get on a call with one of our researchers uh and build out a table for them to use or start exploring the data in an ad hoc querying layer layer and, you know, making visualizations and helping the researchers form better questions so that when we develop their data, when we deploy it to them, uh they can pretty quickly get in there. It's in the format that they're looking for, They understand it. They can run some tests and determine whether the data that we provided for them actually meets their needs. And if it doesn't, we can develop a new set pretty quickly. I I think that also that research function, that discovery function that were enabled through the use of these data is actually helping to bring together uh the community of law enforcement around this this idea of Collaborative understanding of how policing works around the city, you know, sorry, around the world. So of 18,000 or so law enforcement agencies in the United States, there is broad variability in people's competency in their use of data, but we're finding that agencies that have access to these types of tools or who are starting to develop access to these tools and the competencies to use them are coming together. Uh and beginning to talk about how we can understand sort of cross cultural and cross regional correlations and patterns that we see across our multiple operations. And although, you know, those are varied uh and and range around the country or even around the world, I think that that collaboration on understanding how policing works, what's normal, what's abnormal, what we can do about it is really going to be powerful in the future. >>Yeah, Well, this is really exciting. Yeah. Well, what are your thoughts? >>I was just going to build on the point that Lauren was making there because I think I think that is a really important one. Um you know, when when you look around the world, the challenges that different public safety and policing agencies face are actually dramatically similar um and the ability for policing organizations to come together and think about how they use data, think about how they use data in a fair and transparent way is something we're really starting to see and that ability to share insight to experiment um and really make sure that you're bringing lots of different insight together to further the way in which police forces all over the world can actually help keep their citizens safe and combat what is an increasingly rapidly and evolving threat. Landscape is something that we see tools like the intelligent public safety platform really helping to do and if one police force starts to use it in a certain way in one jurisdiction and has success there, there is definitely the ability to share that insight with others and get this global pool of understanding and knowledge all furthering the level of safety and security that can be delivered to communities in the public. >>Terrific. Well, thank you both so much for your insights has been really fantastic to hear. You know, how these new technologies are really coming to the aid of public safety officials and helping secure the public. That was Lauren a thoroughly director of performance analytics and research at the Seattle police Department and James Schlesser. Global Managing Director, Public Safety at its center. And I'm Natalie early, your host for the cube and that was our session for the AWS Global Public uh, partner Awards. Thank you very much for watching. >>Mm

(upbeat music) >> We're here theCUBE on Cloud Startup Showcase brought to you by AWS. And right now we're going to explore the next frontier for privacy, you know, security, privacy, and compliance, they're often lumped together and they're often lumped on as an afterthought bolted on to infrastructure, data and applications. But, you know, while they're certainly related they're different disciplines and they require a specific domain knowledge and expertise to really solve the challenges of today. One thing they all share is successful implementations, must be comprehensive and designed in at the start and with me to discuss going beyond compliance and designing privacy protections into products and services. Justin Antonipillai, who is the founder and CEO of WireWheel, Justin awesome having you on the AWS Startup Showcase. Thanks for being here >> Dave, thanks so much for having me. It's a real honor, and I appreciate it. Look forward to the discussion. >> So I always love to ask founders, like, take us back. Why did you start this company? Where did your inspiration come from? >> So Dave, I was very lucky. I had the honor of serving in president Obama's second term as an Acting Under Secretary for Economic Affairs. So I ran the part of the government that includes the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. So core economic statistical bureaus. But I helped lead a lot of the Obama administration's, outreach and negotiations on data privacy around the world. Including on something called the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield. So at the time the two jobs I had really aligned with what our discussion is here today. The first part of it was, I could see that all around the world in the U.S. and around the world, data privacy and protecting privacy, had become a human rights issue. It was a trade issue. You could see it as a national security issue and companies all around the world were just struggling with how to get legal, how to make sure that I do it right, and how I make sure that I'm treating my customer's data, in the right way. But when I was also leading the agency, a lot of what we were trying to do was to help our U.S. citizens, our folks here around the country solve big public problems by ethically and responsibly using government data to do it. And I can talk about what that meant in a little while. So the inspiration behind why WireWheel was, we need better more technically driven ways to help companies get compliance, to show their customers that they're protecting privacy and to put customers, our customers onto a path where they can start using the customer data better, faster and stronger, but most importantly, ethically. And that's really what we try to tackle at WireWheel. >> Right, excellent. Thank you for that. I mean, yeah you know, in the early days of social media, people kind of fluffed it off and oh there is no privacy in the internet, blah, blah, blah. And then wow, it became a huge social issue and public policy really needed to step in but also technology needs this to help solve this problem. So let's try to paint a picture for people as to really dig into the problem that you solve and why it's so complicated. We actually have a graphic. It's a map of the U S that we want to pull up here. Explain this. >> Yeah, I mean, what you're saying here is that every one of your, our viewers today is going to be looking at privacy laws moving across the country Dave but there's a lot of different ones. You know, if you're a company that's launching and building your product, that you might be helping your customers your consumer facing. The law, and you're even let's assume you want to do the right thing. You want to treat that customer data responsibly and protect it. When you look at a map like this and you can see three States have already passed different privacy laws, but look at the number of different States all across the country that are considering their own privacy laws. It really could be overwhelming. And Virginia, as you can see is just about to pass it's next privacy law but there's something like 23,24 States that are moving them through. The other thing Dave, that's really important about this is, these are not just breach laws. You know, I think years ago we were all looking at these kinds of laws spreading across the country and you would be saying, okay, that's just a breach law. These laws are very comprehensive. They have a lot to them. So what we have been really helping companies with is to enable you to get compliant with a lot of these very quickly. And that's really what we've tried to take on. Because if you're trying to do the right thing there should be a way to do it. >> Got it. Yeah, I can't even imagine what the it had been so many permutations and complexities but imagine this, if this were a globe we were looking at it says it gets out of control. Okay, now you guys well you use a term called phrase beyond compliance? What do we mean by that? >> There are a couple of things. So I'd say almost every company taking a product to market right now, whether you're B2C or B2B you want to make sure you can answer the customer question and say, yes, I'm compliant. And usually that means if you're a B2C company it means that your customers can come to your site. Your site is compliant with all of the laws out there. You can take consents and preferences. You can get their data back to them. All of these are legal requirements. If you're a B2B company, you're also looking at making sure you can create some critical compliance records that's it, right? But when we think beyond compliance, we think of a couple of basic things. Number one, do you tell the story about all the trust and protection you put around your data in a way that your customers want to do business with you? I mean Dave, if you went to CES the last couple of years and you were walking into the center or looking at a virtual version of it, on every billboard, the top five, top 10 global companies advertise that they take care of your data and they're onto something, they're onto something. You can actually build a winning strategy by solving a customer's problem and also showing them that you care, and that they're trustworthy. Because there are too many products out there, that aren't. The second thing, I'm sorry, go ahead. >> No, please carry on. >> No, I mean the second thing, and then I think I'd say is going beyond compliance also means that you're thinking about how you can use that data for your customer, to solve all of their problems. And Dave, what I'd say here is imagine a world right now, in which, you know you trusted that the data that you gave to companies or to the government, was protected and that if you changed your mind and you wanted it back that they would delete it or give it back to you. Can you imagine how much more quickly we would have solved getting a COVID vaccine? Can you imagine how much data would have been available to pharmaceutical companies to actually develop a vaccine? Can you imagine how much more quickly we would have opened the economy? The thing is companies can't solve every problem that they could for a customer because customers don't trust that the data is going to be used correctly and companies don't know how to use it in that way and ethically. And that's what we're talking about when we say getting beyond compliance which is we want to enable our customers to use the data in the best way and most ethical way to solve all of their customer's problems. >> Okay, so I ask the elephant in the room question. If you asked most businesses about personal information, where it's stored, you know who has access to it, the fact is that most people can't answer it. And so when they're confronted with these uncomfortable questions. The other documents and policies that maybe check some boxes, why is that not a good idea? I mean, there's an expense to going beyond that but so why is that not just a good idea to check it off? >> Well look, a lot of companies do need to just check it off and what I mean, get it right, make sure you label and the way we've thought about this is that when you're building on a backbone like AWS, it does give you the ability to buy a lot of services quickly and scale with your company. But it also gives us an ability to comply faster by leveraging that infrastructure to get compliant faster. So if you think about it, 20 years ago whenever I wanted to buy storage or if I wanted to buy servers and look we're a company that built in the cloud, Dave it would have been very difficult for us to buy the right storage and the processing we needed, given that we were starting. But I was able to buy very small amounts of it until our customer profile grew. But that also means my data moved out of a single hard drive and out of a single set of servers, into other places that are hosted in the cloud. So the entire tech stack that all of our customers are building on means they're distributing personal data into the cloud, into SAS platforms. And there's been a really big move through integration platforms as a service to allow you to spread the personal data quickly. But that same infrastructure can be used to also get you compliant faster, and that's the differentiation. So we built a platform that enables a company to inventory their systems, to track what they're doing in those systems and to both create a compliance record faster by tracking what they're doing inside the cloud and in SAS systems. And that's the different way we've been thinking about it as we've been going to market. >> So, okay. So what actually do you sell, you sell a service? Is it a subscription? >> Yeah. >> And AWS is underneath that, maybe you could put down a picture for us. >> Sure, we're a cloud hosted software as a service. We have two core offerings. One is the WireWheel Trust Access Consent Solution. So if you go to a number of major brands, and you go to their website, when they tell you here's the data we're collecting about you, when they collect your consents and preferences, when they collect a request for data correction or deletion of the data, all the way from the request to delivery back to the consumer, we have an end to end system that our customers use with their customers, a completely cloud hostable in a subscription. So enables even very small startups, to build that experience into their website and into their products, from the very beginning, at a cost efficient point. So if you want to stand up a compliant website or you want to build into your product that Trust Access Consent Solution, we have a SAS platform, and we have developer tools and our developer portal to let you do it quickly. The second thing we do is we have a privacy operations manager. So this is the most security center but for privacy operations. It helps you inventory your systems, actually create data flow maps and most critically create compliance records that you need to comply with, you know the European law, the Brazilian law, and that whole spectrum of U.S. privacy laws that you showed a few minutes ago. And those are the two core offerings we have. >> I love it. I mean, it's the cloud story, right? One is you don't have to spend a millions of dollars on hardware and software. And the second is, when you launch you enable small companies, not just the biggest companies you give them the same, essentially the same services. And that's a great story. Who do you sell to Justin? What does a typical customer engagement look? >> Yeah, we, in many of our customers and in the AWS say startup environment, you often don't have companies that have like a privacy officer. They often don't even have a general counsel. So we sell a package that will often go to whoever is responsible at the company for privacy compliance. And, you know, interestingly Dave in some startups that might be a marketing officer, it might be a CLO, it might be the CTO. So in startups and sort of growing companies, we've put out a lot of guidance, and our core WireWheel developer portal is meant to give even a startup all they need to stand up that experience and get it going, so that when you get that procurement imagine you're about to go sell your product, and they ask you, are you compliant, then you have that document ready to provide. We also do provide this core infrastructure for enormous enterprises. So think telecoms, think top three global technology companies. So Dave, we get excited about is we've built a core software platform privacy infrastructure that is permanently being used by some of the largest companies in the world. And our goal is to get that infrastructure at the right price point into every company in the world, right? We want to enable any company to spend and stand up the right system, that's leveraging that same privacy infrastructure that the big folks have, so that as they scale, they can continue to do the right thing. >> That's awesome. I mean, you mentioned a number of roles of marketing folks. I can even see a sales, let's say sales lead saying, okay we got this deal on the table. How do we get through the procurement because we didn't check the box, all right. So, let me ask you this. We talked a little bit about designing privacy in a and it's clear you help do that. How do you make it, you know fundamental to customer's workloads? Do they have to be like an AWS customer to take advantage of that concept? Or how did they make it part of their workflow? >> Yeah, so there's a couple of critical things. How do you make it part of the workflow? The first thing is, you go to any company's website right now, they have to be compliant with the California law. So a very straightforward thing we do is we can for both B2B and B2C companies stand up an entire customer experience that matches the scale of the company that enables it to be compliant. That means you have a trust center that shows the right information to your customers, it collects the consents, preferences, and it stands up with a portal to request data. These are basics. And for a company that's standing up the internal operations, we can get them app collecting that core record and create a compliance record very fast. With larger companies, Dave you're right. I mean, when you're talking about understanding your entire infrastructure and understanding where you're storing and processing data it could seem overwhelming, but the truth is, the way we onboard our customers is we get you compliance on your product and website first, right? We focus on your product to get that compliance record done. We focus on your website so that you can sell your product. And then we go through the rest of the major systems where you're handling personal information, your sales, your marketing, you know, it's like a natural process. So larger enterprises we have a pretty straightforward way that we get them up and running, but even small startups we can get them to a point of getting them compliant and starting to think about other things very, very quickly. >> And so Justin, you're a government so you understand big, but how I talk about the secret ingredient that allows you to do this at scale and still handle all that diversity, like what we showed in that graphic, the different locations, different local laws, data sovereignty, et cetera. >> Yeah, there's a couple things on the secret source. One is, we have to think about our customers every day. And we had to understand that companies will use whatever their infrastructure is to build. Like you've seen, even on AWS there are so many different services you can use. So number one, we always think with an engineering point of view in mind. Understand the tools, understand the infrastructure in a way that brings that kind of basic visibility to whoever it is that's handling privacy, that basic understanding. The second is, we focused on core user experience for the non-technical user. It's really easy to get started. It's really easy to stand up your privacy page and your privacy policy. It's really easy to collect that and make that first record. The third is, and you know, this is one of those key things. When I was in the government, I met with folks in the intelligence community at one point day, and this always stuck with me. They were telling me that 20 years ago, you know to do the kind of innovation that you have going on now, you would have had to have had a defense contract. You would have had to have invested an enormous amount of money to buy the processing and the services and the team. But the ability for me as a startup founder, to understand the big picture and understand that companies need to be compliant fast, get their website compliant fast, get their product compliant fast, but build on a cloud infrastructure that allowed me to scale was incredible. Because it allows us to do a lot with our customers that a company like ours would have been really challenged to do without that cloud backbone. >> Love this, the agility and the innovation. Last question, give us the company update Justin, you know where are you? What can you share with us, fundraising, head count, are you generating revenue? Where you are? >> Oh yeah, we're excited as I mentioned, we are already the privacy platform of choice of some of the larger brands in the world, which we're very excited about. And we help them solve both the trust, access consent problem for their customers, and we help with the privacy operations management. We recently announced a new $20 million infusion of capital, led by a terrific venture capital fund, ForgePoint Capital. We've been lucky to have been supported by NEA, Sands Capital, Revolution Capital, Pritzker Capital, PSP. And so we have a terrific group of investors behind us. We are scaling, we've grown the company a lot in the last year. Obviously it's been an interesting and challenging year with COVID, but we are really focused on growing our sales team, our marketing team, and we're going to be offering some pretty exciting solutions here for the rest of the year. >> The timing was unbelievable, you had the cloud at your beck and call, you had the experience in government. You've got your background as a lawyer. And it all came in, and the legal come into the forefront of public policy, just a congratulations on all your progress today. We're really looking forward to seeing you guys rocket in the future. I really appreciate you coming on. >> Dave, thanks so much for having me, really enjoyed it. And I look forward to seeing you soon. >> Great, and thank you for watching everyone is Dave Vellante for theCUBE on cloud startups. Keep it right there. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> We're here theCUBE on Cloud Startup Showcase brought to you by AWS. And right now we're going to explore the next frontier for privacy, you know, security, privacy, and compliance, they're often lumped together and they're often lumped on as an afterthought bolted on to infrastructure, data and applications. But, you know, while they're certainly related they're different disciplines and they require a specific domain knowledge and expertise to really solve the challenges of today. One thing they all share is successful implementations, must be comprehensive and designed in at the start and with me to discuss going beyond compliance and designing privacy protections into products and services. Justin Antonipillai, who is the founder and CEO of WireWheel, Justin awesome having you on the AWS Startup Showcase. Thanks for being here >> Dave, thanks so much for having me. It's a real honor, and I appreciate it. Look forward to the discussion. >> So I always love to ask founders, like, take us back. Why did you start this company? Where did your inspiration come from? >> So Dave, I was very lucky. I had the honor of serving in president Obama's second term as an Acting Under Secretary for Economic Affairs. So I ran the part of the government that includes the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. So core economic statistical bureaus. But I helped lead a lot of the Obama administration's, outreach and negotiations on data privacy around the world. Including on something called the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield. So at the time the two jobs I had really aligned with what our discussion is here today. The first part of it was, I could see that all around the world in the U.S. and around the world, data privacy and protecting privacy, had become a human rights issue. It was a trade issue. You could see it as a national security issue and companies all around the world were just struggling with how to get legal, how to make sure that I do it right, and how I make sure that I'm treating my customer's data, in the right way. But when I was also leading the agency, a lot of what we were trying to do was to help our U.S. citizens, our folks here around the country solve big public problems by ethically and responsibly using government data to do it. And I can talk about what that meant in a little while. So the inspiration behind why WireWheel was, we need better more technically driven ways to help companies get compliance, to show their customers that they're protecting privacy and to put customers, our customers onto a path where they can start using the customer data better, faster and stronger, but most importantly, ethically. And that's really what we try to tackle at WireWheel. >> Right, excellent. Thank you for that. I mean, yeah you know, in the early days of social media, people kind of fluffed it off and oh there is no privacy in the internet, blah, blah, blah. And then wow, it became a huge social issue and public policy really needed to step in but also technology needs this to help solve this problem. So let's try to paint a picture for people as to really dig into the problem that you solve and why it's so complicated. We actually have a graphic. It's a map of the U S that we want to pull up here. Explain this. >> Yeah, I mean, what you're saying here is that every one of your, our viewers today is going to be looking at privacy laws moving across the country Dave but there's a lot of different ones. You know, if you're a company that's launching and building your product, that you might be helping your customers your consumer facing. The law, and you're even let's assume you want to do the right thing. You want to treat that customer data responsibly and protect it. When you look at a map like this and you can see three States have already passed different privacy laws, but look at the number of different States all across the country that are considering their own privacy laws. It really could be overwhelming. And Virginia, as you can see is just about to pass it's next privacy law but there's something like 23,24 States that are moving them through. The other thing Dave, that's really important about this is, these are not just breach laws. You know, I think years ago we were all looking at these kinds of laws spreading across the country and you would be saying, okay, that's just a breach law. These laws are very comprehensive. They have a lot to them. So what we have been really helping companies with is to enable you to get compliant with a lot of these very quickly. And that's really what we've tried to take on. Because if you're trying to do the right thing there should be a way to do it. >> Got it. Yeah, I can't even imagine what the it had been so many permutations and complexities but imagine this, if this were a globe we were looking at it says it gets out of control. Okay, now you guys well you use a term called phrase beyond compliance? What do we mean by that? >> There are a couple of things. So I'd say almost every company taking a product to market right now, whether you're B2C or B2B you want to make sure you can answer the customer question and say, yes, I'm compliant. And usually that means if you're a B2C company it means that your customers can come to your site. Your site is compliant with all of the laws out there. You can take consents and preferences. You can get their data back to them. All of these are legal requirements. If you're a B2B company, you're also looking at making sure you can create some critical compliance records that's it, right? But when we think beyond compliance, we think of a couple of basic things. Number one, do you tell the story about all the trust and protection you put around your data in a way that your customers want to do business with you? I mean Dave, if you went to CES the last couple of years and you were walking into the center or looking at a virtual version of it, on every billboard, the top five, top 10 global companies advertise that they take care of your data and they're onto something, they're onto something. You can actually build a winning strategy by solving a customer's problem and also showing them that you care, and that they're trustworthy. Because there are too many products out there, that aren't. The second thing, I'm sorry, go ahead. >> No, please carry on. >> No, I mean the second thing, and then I think I'd say is going beyond compliance also means that you're thinking about how you can use that data for your customer, to solve all of their problems. And Dave, what I'd say here is imagine a world right now, in which, you know you trusted that the data that you gave to companies or to the government, was protected and that if you changed your mind and you wanted it back that they would delete it or give it back to you. Can you imagine how much more quickly we would have solved getting a COVID vaccine? Can you imagine how much data would have been available to pharmaceutical companies to actually develop a vaccine? Can you imagine how much more quickly we would have opened the economy? The thing is companies can't solve every problem that they could for a customer because customers don't trust that the data is going to be used correctly and companies don't know how to use it in that way and ethically. And that's what we're talking about when we say getting beyond compliance which is we want to enable our customers to use the data in the best way and most ethical way to solve all of their customer's problems. >> Okay, so I ask the elephant in the room question. If you asked most businesses about personal information, where it's stored, you know who has access to it, the fact is that most people can't answer it. And so when they're confronted with these uncomfortable questions. The other documents and policies that maybe check some boxes, why is that not a good idea? I mean, there's an expense to going beyond that but so why is that not just a good idea to check it off? >> Well look, a lot of companies do need to just check it off and what I mean, get it right, make sure you label and the way we've thought about this is that when you're building on a backbone like AWS, it does give you the ability to buy a lot of services quickly and scale with your company. But it also gives us an ability to comply faster by leveraging that infrastructure to get compliant faster. So if you think about it, 20 years ago whenever I wanted to buy storage or if I wanted to buy servers and look we're a company that built in the cloud, Dave it would have been very difficult for us to buy the right storage and the processing we needed, given that we were starting. But I was able to buy very small amounts of it until our customer profile grew. But that also means my data moved out of a single hard drive and out of a single set of servers, into other places that are hosted in the cloud. So the entire tech stack that all of our customers are building on means they're distributing personal data into the cloud, into SAS platforms. And there's been a really big move through integration platforms as a service to allow you to spread the personal data quickly. But that same infrastructure can be used to also get you compliant faster, and that's the differentiation. So we built a platform that enables a company to inventory their systems, to track what they're doing in those systems and to both create a compliance record faster by tracking what they're doing inside the cloud and in SAS systems. And that's the different way we've been thinking about it as we've been going to market. >> So, okay. So what actually do you sell, you sell a service? Is it a subscription? >> Yeah. >> And AWS is underneath that, maybe you could put down a picture for us. >> Sure, we're a cloud hosted software as a service. We have two core offerings. One is the WireWheel Trust Access Consent Solution. So if you go to a number of major brands, and you go to their website, when they tell you here's the data we're collecting about you, when they collect your consents and preferences, when they collect a request for data correction or deletion of the data, all the way from the request to delivery back to the consumer, we have an end to end system that our customers use with their customers, a completely cloud hostable in a subscription. So enables even very small startups, to build that experience into their website and into their products, from the very beginning, at a cost efficient point. So if you want to stand up a compliant website or you want to build into your product that Trust Access Consent Solution, we have a SAS platform, and we have developer tools and our developer portal to let you do it quickly. The second thing we do is we have a privacy operations manager. So this is the most security center but for privacy operations. It helps you inventory your systems, actually create data flow maps and most critically create compliance records that you need to comply with, you know the European law, the Brazilian law, and that whole spectrum of U.S. privacy laws that you showed a few minutes ago. And those are the two core offerings we have. >> I love it. I mean, it's the cloud story, right? One is you don't have to spend a millions of dollars on hardware and software. And the second is, when you launch you enable small companies, not just the biggest companies you give them the same, essentially the same services. And that's a great story. Who do you sell to Justin? What does a typical customer engagement look? >> Yeah, we, in many of our customers and in the AWS say startup environment, you often don't have companies that have like a privacy officer. They often don't even have a general counsel. So we sell a package that will often go to whoever is responsible at the company for privacy compliance. And, you know, interestingly Dave in some startups that might be a marketing officer, it might be a CLO, it might be the CTO. So in startups and sort of growing companies, we've put out a lot of guidance, and our core WireWheel developer portal is meant to give even a startup all they need to stand up that experience and get it going, so that when you get that procurement imagine you're about to go sell your product, and they ask you, are you compliant, then you have that document ready to provide. We also do provide this core infrastructure for enormous enterprises. So think telecoms, think top three global technology companies. So Dave, we get excited about is we've built a core software platform privacy infrastructure that is permanently being used by some of the largest companies in the world. And our goal is to get that infrastructure at the right price point into every company in the world, right? We want to enable any company to spend and stand up the right system, that's leveraging that same privacy infrastructure that the big folks have, so that as they scale, they can continue to do the right thing. >> That's awesome. I mean, you mentioned a number of roles of marketing folks. I can even see a sales, let's say sales lead saying, okay we got this deal on the table. How do we get through the procurement because we didn't check the box, all right. So, let me ask you this. We talked a little bit about designing privacy in a and it's clear you help do that. How do you make it, you know fundamental to customer's workloads? Do they have to be like an AWS customer to take advantage of that concept? Or how did they make it part of their workflow? >> Yeah, so there's a couple of critical things. How do you make it part of the workflow? The first thing is, you go to any company's website right now, they have to be compliant with the California law. So a very straightforward thing we do is we can for both B2B and B2C companies stand up an entire customer experience that matches the scale of the company that enables it to be compliant. That means you have a trust center that shows the right information to your customers, it collects the consents, preferences, and it stands up with a portal to request data. These are basics. And for a company that's standing up the internal operations, we can get them app collecting that core record and create a compliance record very fast. With larger companies, Dave you're right. I mean, when you're talking about understanding your entire infrastructure and understanding where you're storing and processing data it could seem overwhelming, but the truth is, the way we onboard our customers is we get you compliance on your product and website first, right? We focus on your product to get that compliance record done. We focus on your website so that you can sell your product. And then we go through the rest of the major systems where you're handling personal information, your sales, your marketing, you know, it's like a natural process. So larger enterprises we have a pretty straightforward way that we get them up and running, but even small startups we can get them to a point of getting them compliant and starting to think about other things very, very quickly. >> And so Justin, you're a government so you understand big, but how I talk about the secret ingredient that allows you to do this at scale and still handle all that diversity, like what we showed in that graphic, the different locations, different local laws, data sovereignty, et cetera. >> Yeah, there's a couple things on the secret source. One is, we have to think about our customers every day. And we had to understand that companies will use whatever their infrastructure is to build. Like you've seen, even on AWS there are so many different services you can use. So number one, we always think with an engineering point of view in mind. Understand the tools, understand the infrastructure in a way that brings that kind of basic visibility to whoever it is that's handling privacy, that basic understanding. The second is, we focused on core user experience for the non-technical user. It's really easy to get started. It's really easy to stand up your privacy page and your privacy policy. It's really easy to collect that and make that first record. The third is, and you know, this is one of those key things. When I was in the government, I met with folks in the intelligence community at one point day, and this always stuck with me. They were telling me that 20 years ago, you know to do the kind of innovation that you have going on now, you would have had to have had a defense contract. You would have had to have invested an enormous amount of money to buy the processing and the services and the team. But the ability for me as a startup founder, to understand the big picture and understand that companies need to be compliant fast, get their website compliant fast, get their product compliant fast, but build on a cloud infrastructure that allowed me to scale was incredible. Because it allows us to do a lot with our customers that a company like ours would have been really challenged to do without that cloud backbone. >> Love this, the agility and the innovation. Last question, give us the company update Justin, you know where are you? What can you share with us, fundraising, head count, are you generating revenue? Where you are? >> Oh yeah, we're excited as I mentioned, we are already the privacy platform of choice of some of the larger brands in the world, which we're very excited about. And we help them solve both the trust, access consent problem for their customers, and we help with the privacy operations management. We recently announced a new $20 million infusion of capital, led by a terrific venture capital fund, ForgePoint Capital. We've been lucky to have been supported by NEA, Sands Capital, Revolution Capital, Pritzker Capital, PSP. And so we have a terrific group of investors behind us. We are scaling, we've grown the company a lot in the last year. Obviously it's been an interesting and challenging year with COVID, but we are really focused on growing our sales team, our marketing team, and we're going to be offering some pretty exciting solutions here for the rest of the year. >> The timing was unbelievable, you had the cloud at your beck and call, you had the experience in government. You've got your background as a lawyer. And it all came in, and the legal come into the forefront of public policy, just a congratulations on all your progress today. We're really looking forward to seeing you guys rocket in the future. I really appreciate you coming on. >> Dave, thanks so much for having me, really enjoyed it. And I look forward to seeing you soon. >> Great, and thank you for watching everyone is Dave Vellante for theCUBE on cloud startups. Keep it right there. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> From our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a CUBE Conversation. >> Hi, I'm Peter Burris, and welcome to another CUBE Conversation. One of the challenges that any digital business or any business faces is how to more rapidly and simply configure their business so that it can take advantage of the opportunities and challenges that their industry faces. Now, it's very, very difficult in a world where a lot of the underlying network resources are hardwired, so as a consequence, every business is looking at new technologies and new options for how they can better software-define how those network resources are set up and organized and operate, especially in the WAN area, so to have that conversation about how to bring a new approach to thinking about network facility and network ease, we've got Shashi Kiran, who's the CMO of Aryaka, here to talk to us. Shashi, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, Peter. It's wonderful to be here. >> So let's start, what's the update on Aryaka? >> Well, you caught me on a good day today because we're just coming off our Q3 results, and we really had a good quarter, lot of new logos coming in and new customers piggybacking on the digital transformation that you talked about. As they go about transforming their organizations digitally, moving to the cloud, modernizing their application stacks, what they see is that underlying infrastructure sometimes as bottomless and impedes their global transformation effort, so I think our contribution has been to really get rid of those speed bumps as part of that WAN transformation and accelerate it. >> Well, let's talk a little bit about that WAN transformation. What is it, in particular, that customers are struggling with as they think about moving to more of an SD-WAN world? And I'll give you a little bit of a clue, as far as I can see it, as they start to think more in terms of software-defined WAN, that doesn't necessarily mean that they should be thinking about installing a whole bunch of network operating systems, have I got that right? >> I think that's spot on. First of all, WAN transformation, SD-WAN, these are all means to the end, and in many cases, depending on the type of customers, sometimes it's not really where their area of expertise is. They would rather focus on their business imperatives than say, hey, somebody else needs to figure this problem out, and it's less about network operating systems getting distributed 'cause that also leads to its own set of issues, then forgetting them, patching them, maintaining that is a huge issue. >> Pain for them. >> It's a very painful operational overhead, so what we do and who Aryaka is is we're perhaps the industry's first and I would like to say best-managed SD-WAN solution, which means we kind of take care of the connectivity globally. We have our own POPs, points of presence, almost 35 of them globally, and they are set up that they are 20 to 30 milliseconds away from any new site that could be activated, and we have our own orchestration platform. We have our CPs as well that we lease out, or it's consumed as part of service, and our own security offering as well as WAN optimization offering, so it's really this whole platform architecture that we can mass the complexity of and offer a simple service for any customers to consume, and so that's really where they look at it as something that will help them be more agile, but also because we have our own network, it helps things to be a lot more predictable. Key triggers we see drivers for our application performance, somebody's having issues, particularly in a distributed global environment, they come to us. Move to the cloud, that's a big deal, particularly in a multi-cloud area. That's almost 50% of the inquiries that we receive in terms of us really acting as a gateway for their cloud globally. MPLS contracts expiring, and MPLS, as you know, has been a really good mainstay for the last couple of decades, but it's not really where the cloud world is, so we see a lot of that serving as a trigger, but more often than not, it's really allying with the business imperatives and seeing, could we be a partner for their transformation initiatives? >> Give me a sense of how SD-WAN should work optimally. What should an SD-WAN be for the business, and how does it relate to business flexibility and different value propositions? >> So today if you look at the market, I would say there are two models for SD-WAN, and on one side, you have these overlay SD-WAN providers who have been coming out in the last few years. In fact, there's a lot of clutter in the market with the overlay SD-WAN providers, and what they do is they have a box controller, gateway functionality, and it's really meant to be an overlay on somebody else's network, with agility being the promise, and it leverages internet for the most part, so that's one approach, which is good when somebody wants to get SD-WAN going in a reasonable area with a fast time to market, but there are predictability issues. There are issues in terms of scaling it globally, so that's where the second model comes in, which is sort of the operators of the world, the service providers and TELECOs of the world, and they say, look, we have the network, and we will take the intellectual property of these SD-WAN software vendors, and offer it as a managed SD-WAN solution. >> But it's somebody else's intellectual property? >> It's somebody else's IP for the most part, right, and so the challenge with that is really the experience that gets out either for the end user or for the application, and in many case, again, when you go down the path of a global network, they have SLA handoffs across multiple providers, last mile issues, and things like that, so each has its pros and cons, and I think where we have focused our energies on is really something that's the best of both. As I said, we own the underlying network, which allows us to give very predictable performance, fully meshed, and 99.99 plus percent availability, but we also are now looking at the last mile, procuring, managing that, so it's enter and connectivity. Many of our POPs are co-located with the public cloud providers, whether its AWS, Azure, Google, and so we have a direct connect, and we are able to manage that cloud connectivity. And then, each of these links are able to optimize those WAN, really allow for bursting, look at each application, then give it the kind of priority that it deserves, and the security aspect of it, so bringing all of these things together, and today, I would say we can almost get up any new site, globally up and running, in a matter of a couple of days, and that is huge because what we have seen traditionally is it takes weeks to months just for site planning, and in case of MPLS, activating it, so that's really where we see, you know, can you bring this into a consumption model, just like electricity or water. You want somebody to say-- >> Well, the cloud. >> Oh, the cloud, right, and that actually has helped a lot with the mindset because CIOs and a number of application architects, they're now used to the cloud model, it's a consumption model, so the question is why can't the WAN be like that? Why does it need to be hardwired? Why does it need to be hop by hop across so many different providers? Can you make the cloud equal to the WAN as well and make the WAN consumable? So that's really where the energy focus and the kind of customers that we're attracting are subscribing to that approach. >> So you're getting the flexibility of a service and the predictability of having your own IP being able to provide that service? >> Yes, so it's a flexibility, but also speed. You know, agility is a very important driver for SD-WAN, so I remember some of these images floating around would say, choose two, it's either fast or it's good or it's cheap, and you don't have all three, and in a way, we kind of bring all three together because fast, it's good, and over a period of time, because we continue to drive the cost down, it ends up in a lower TC offering as well, so that's the sweet spot in the center. >> So give us some sense of how customers are using you today. Are they deploying you for specific applications, specific regions, or are they actually starting to use you as a general approach to managing globally their wide area networks? >> It's a bit of both. I see a lot of customers are expanding their footprint, either through M&As, or because they have a manufacturing facility somewhere, there's a freight and logistic facility, and it's global world today, right, and the whole globalization phenomenon has meant that how do you actually get a consistency in terms of your connectivity, but more importantly, your application experience and expertise as well, and so that is a key trigger. Can you normalize and have a democratic approach to all of your sites, not just your headquarters, and make your employee pool that much more productive, so that's a key CIO, CEO level conversation which is driving a lot of these decisions. In fact, today I just posted on my LinkedIn profile about a case study of customer poly-element solutions, so this company was formally called PSP. They're a chemical manufacturing company, and so they wanted to get off MPLS, so they chose Aryaka, and they also wanted to go down the path with the managed service offering, but what was very interesting to me personally was business happened. You know, just as you say life happens, business happened, and what happened to them was they decided to divest almost half of their business, which they spun off into a different company called Arysta, and as I scoped it out, it was very hard for them to actually take away half of the company, including its infrastructure, and carve it out and keep the lights running in both places, and so what we enabled them to do was kind of just do that in a non-deceptive way with zero down time, and they ended up being two successful companies out there, and this was for them kind of magic, right, and so-- >> So you created a whole new set of options for them? >> Yes, yes, and even before they were looking at the different options, it was taking a two-year period for them to kind of just do the planning and the execution, and we kind of did that in about four to six months globally, and so that is when they are now willing to stand up on a platform on our behalf and say, hey, you know, this is what Aryaka did for us, and they come and share that experience externally, and the good part for me as a CMO is I'm about two and a half months into this company, and the first four weeks that I was here, I was on a call with four to five different customers in those four, five weeks who were talking on our behalf to the media, and this for me, even while I was at companies like Cisco, was a hard thing to accomplish because to get a customer to go speak on your behalf, on behalf to the media, was big issue, but here I see them being ebullient, they're happy, and they're happy to speak on behalf to the media, which is pleasantly surprising for a CMO. >> Hey, your customers are your best sellers, right? >> Absolutely. >> Shashi Kiran, CMO of Aryaka, thanks very much for being on theCUBE. >> Thank you, Peter, I enjoyed being here. >> And once again, I'm Peter Burris, and this has been another CUBE Conversation. Until next time. (upbeat music)