“Maybe it’ll be faster for them to just speak.” Security personnel typically have to navigate multiple systems and contextualize mountains of data in real-time, a plate-spinning act under the best of circumstances. “There’s all kinds of things that our analysts do today, and some of them take a lot of time,” says Spisak. But if you want extra info along the way, it’s available. In either case-zombies or hackers-your main focus will always be on swatting away intruders. Spisak likens its potential role to that of the elaborate second-screen experience offered by The Walking Dead’s Story Sync interactive app. The consensus? Mike, and Evan, were onto something.įirst, it’s best to think of Havyn as complementary to current cybersecurity workflows, rather than a wholesale replacement. Eventually, Spisak gave Havyn an avatar inspired by Watson’s original logo, because he “felt a little nutty talking to a computer.”īy the time Thanksgiving came around, Spisak felt confident enough in Hayvn-and optimistic enough about its real-world utility-that he started showing it off to his IBM colleagues. Spisak hooked Havyn up to IBM BigFix, and endpoint security manager that can ascertain not just what cyberthreats exist, but whether any directly impact a given system. “We took the ‘y’ spelling because it looked cool,” says Spisak. They settled on Havyn, as in “safe haven.” When the conversations became frequent enough to merit a formal moniker, father and son went to a baby-naming website for inspiration. Joe name the company gives its security operations hubs-in Atlanta, Boulder, Poland, and Costa Rica are already testing it in the real world.Īs the weeks went by, Spisak found himself talking with the new interface daily, asking both about general developments in cybersecurity, mostly centered on new threats that had surfaced. Instead of connecting users to Spotify or online shopping carts, it helps fight cyberthreats.Īnd while Havyn may have started as spare-time tinkering, a dozen analysts at IBM’s X-Force Command Centers-the G.I.

Think of Havyn, instead, as a highly specific analog to Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant. While Spisak likens his creation to Tony Stark’s “Jarvis” AI assistant, the shortest path to understanding its importance isn’t though comics mythology. It was Havyn, a homegrown voice assistant that taps into IBM’s enormous cybersecurity infrastructure, putting Watson’s AI smarts at their literal beck and call. And what they came up with was no birdhouse or pinewood derby car. But Evan’s father, Mike, is an IBM master inventor. Last October, 11-year-old Evan Spisak wandered down to his father’s basement workshop to help out on a weekend project, a time-honored tradition in homes across the country.

Jarvis ai on raspberry pi