Facing a challenge in keeping up with the volume of security situation reports at a global telecommunications corporation, Global Security Operations Manager Ted DeSanti saw firsthand an opportunity to address the issue during his Center for Homeland Defense and Security educational experience.
The CHDS Emergence Program alum (Cohort 2401) said he realized during Prof. Rodrigo Nieto-Gomez’s presentation on the potential for using artificial intelligence entitled “Crafting Clarity: A Practical Lab on the Art of Prompt Engineering” that AI could be used to handle the volume of security situation reports his Global Security Operations Center (GSOC) operators were charged with handling on everything from reports of natural disasters to terrorism threats and the like.
That prompted DeSanti’s Emergence change initiative entitled “Artificial Intelligence Integration for Global Security Operations,” which he said has already been presented to his firm’s leadership and received a positive response.
“I recognized a gap in my GSOC operators’ ability to properly keep up with the sheer volume of alert input and also put out quality reporting in a quick time frame,” he said. “They simply needed something to help them keep up, and presentations in the Emergence Program helped me realize that the tech to help them in AI wasn’t just on the way, it was already here. I chose this initiative because I walked away with the impression that if I didn’t, within two years we’d be wildly behind industry leaders’ standard of report generation.”
DeSanti said his research and testing showed that using AI to produce security situation reports greatly improved the speed and accuracy of the reports, and he noted that the proposal would not replace existing operators but simply make handling the volume of reports easier and at an affordable cost, both key goals.
“The main thing I took away from the AI presentation was if I didn’t take a strong stand then somebody else would. If we had to catch up it would be a more laborious process and the only option then would be to add more manpower. Now we can use the same manpower and not entirely rework our operations.”
Thus far, DeSanti said the proposal has been approved by the corporation’s leadership and legal department, and he has met with the AI approval panel and received approval to move to the next steps, including further cybersecurity vetting before program development and training ahead of implementation.
“We’re currently awaiting the go from our cybersecurity liaisons, after which point I’ll begin developing training alongside the AI tool itself so that it can provide our operators with a good first draft and incident summary within seconds based on a received alert rather than have to start message generation nearly from scratch each and every time,” he said. “I’m really excited to see what the results are.”
In addition to the AI epiphany, DeSanti said he was expecting the outstanding networking opportunity through his CHDS education, noting his fellow alums “are amazing,” but was also impressed by the instruction on such critical issues as “process management, understanding the various issues organizations face and how to implement long-term change, and emerging threats and technologies.”
“Being able to share the room with such a variety of people from different areas of government and hear what they were thinking based off the presentations we were hearing was the best part of the whole experience,” he said.
