Sarah Tatsis, is the Vice President of Advanced Technology Development Labs at BlackBerry.
BlackBerry already secures more than 500M endpoints including 150M cars on the road. BlackBerry is leading the way with a single platform for securing, managing and optimizing how intelligent endpoints are deployed in the enterprise, enabling customers to stay ahead of the technology curve that will reshape every industry.
BlackBerry launched the Advanced Technology Development Lab (Blackberry Labs) in late 2019. What was the strategic importance of creating an entire new business division for BlackBerry?
As an innovation accelerator, BlackBerry Advanced Technology Development Labs is an intentional investment of 120 team members into the future of the company. The rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) alongside a dynamic threat landscape has fostered a climate where organizations have to guard against new threats and breaches at all times. Weve handpicked the team to include experts in the embedded IoT space with diverse capabilities, including strong data science expertise, whose innovation funnel investigates, incubates and develops technologies to keep BlackBerry at the forefront of security innovation. ATD Labs works in strong partnership with the other BlackBerry business units, such as QNX, to further the companys commitment to safety, security and data privacy for its customers. BlackBerry Labs is also partnering with universities on active research and development. Were quite proud of these initiatives and think they will greatly benefit our future roadmap.
Last year, BlackBerry Labs successfully integrated Cylances machine learning technology into BlackBerrys product pipeline. BlackBerry Labs is currently focused on incubating and developing new concepts to accelerate the innovation roadmaps for our Spark and IoT business units. My role is primarily helping to drive the innovation funnel and partner with our business units to deliver valuable solutions for our customers.
What type of products are being developed at BlackBerry Labs?
BlackBerry Labs is facilitating applied research and using insights gained to innovate in the lines of business where were already developing market-leading solutions. For instance, were applying machine learning and data science to our existing areas of application, including automotive, mobile security, etc. This is possible in large part due to the influx of BlackBerry Cylance technology and expertise, which allows us to combine our ML pipeline and market knowledge to create solutions that are securing information and devices in a really comprehensive way. As new technologies and threats emerge, BlackBerry Labs will allow us to take a proactive approach to cybersecurity, not only updating our existing solutions, but evaluating how we can branch out and provide a more comprehensive, data-based, and diverse portfolio to secure the Internet of Things.
At CES, for instance, we unveiled an AI-based transportation solution geared towards OEMs and commercial fleets. This solution provides a holistic view of the security and health of a vehicle and provides control over that security for a manufacturer or fleet manager. It also uses machine learning based continuous authentication to identify a driver of a vehicle based on past driving behavior. Born in BlackBerry Labs, this concept marked the first time BlackBerry Cylances AI and ML technologies have been integrated with BlackBerry QNX solutions, which are currently powering upwards of 150 million vehicles on the road today.
For additional insights into how we envision AI and ML shaping the world of mobility in the years to come, I would encourage you to read Security Confidence Through Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Smart Mobility from our recently released Road to Mobility guide. Also released at this years CES, The Road to Mobility: The 2020 Guide to Trends and Technology for Smart Cities and Transportation, is a comprehensive resource that government regulators, automotive executives and technology innovators can turn to for forward-thinking considerations for making safe and secure autonomous and connected vehicles a reality, delivering a transportation future that drivers, passengers and pedestrians alike can trust.
Featuring a mix of insights from both our own internal experts and recognized voices from across the transportation industry, the guide provides practical strategies for anyone whos interested in playing a vital role in shaping what the vehicles and infrastructure of our shared autonomous future will look like.
How important is artificial intelligence to the future of BlackBerry?
As both IoT and cybersecurity risk explodes, traditional methods of keeping organizations, things, and people safe and secure are becoming unscalable and ineffective. Preventing, detecting, and responding to potential threats needs to account for large amounts of data and intelligent automation of appropriate responses. AI and data science include tools that address these challenges and are therefore critical to the roadmap of BlackBerry. These tools allow BlackBerry to provide even greater value to our customers by reducing risk in efficient ways. BlackBerry leverages AI to deliver innovative solutions in the areas of cybersecurity, safety and data privacy as part of our strategy to connect, secure, and manage every endpoint in the Internet of Things.
For instance, BlackBerry trains our end point protection AI model against billions of files, good and bad, so that it learns to autonomously convict, or not convict files, pre-execution. The result of this massive, ongoing training effort is a proven track record of blocking payloads attempting to exploit zero-days for up to two years into the future.
The ability to protect organizations from zero-day payloads, well before they are developed and deployed, means that when other IT teams are scrambling to recover from the next major outbreak, it will be business as usual for BlackBerry customers. For example, WannaCry, which rendered millions of computers across the globe useless, was prevented by a BlackBerry (Cylance) machine learning model developed, trained, and deployed 24 months before the malware was first reported.
BlackBerrys QNX software is embedded in more than 150 million cars. Can you discuss what this software does?
Our software provides the safe and secure software foundation for many of the systems within the vehicle. We have a broad portfolio of functional safety-certified software including our QNX operating system, development tools and middleware for autonomous and connected vehicles. In the automotive segment, the companys software is deployed across the vehicle in systems such as ADAS and Safety Systems, Digital Cockpits, Digital Instrument Clusters, Infotainment, Telematics, Gateways, V2X and increasingly is being selected for chassis control and battery management systems that are advancing in complexity.
QNX software includes cybersecurity which protects autonomous vehicles from various cyber-attacks. Can you discuss some of the potential vulnerabilities that autonomous vehicles have to cyberattacks?
I think there is still a misconception out there that when you get into your car to drive home from work later today you might fall prey to a massive and coordinated vehicle cyberattack in which a rogue state threatens to hold you and your vehicle ransom unless you meet their demands. Hollywood movies are good at exaggerating what is possible, for example, instant and entire compromise of fleets that undermines all safety systems in cars. Whilst there are and always will be vulnerabilities within any system, to exploit a vulnerability and on scale with unprecedented reliability presents all kinds of hurdles that must be overcome, and would also require a significant investment of time, energy and resources. I think the general public needs to be reminded of this and the fact that hacking, if and when they do occur, are undesirable but not as movies would have you believe.
With a modern connected vehicle now containing well over 100 million lines of code and some of the most complex software ever deployed by automakers, the need for robust security has never been more important. As the software in a car grows so does the attack surface, which makes it more vulnerable to cyberattacks. Each poorly constructed piece of software represents a potential vulnerability that can be exploited by attackers.
BlackBerry is perfectly positioned to address these challenges as we have the solutions, the expertise and pedigree to be the safety certified and secure foundational software for autonomous and connected vehicles.
How does QNX software protect vehicles from these potential cyberattacks?
BlackBerry has a broad portfolio of products and services to protect vehicles against cybersecurity attacks. Our software has been deployed in critical embedded systems for over three decades and its worth pointing out, has also been certified to the highest level of automotive certification for functional safety with ISO 26262 ASIL D. As a company, we are investing significantly to broaden our safety and security product and services portfolio. Simply put, this is what our customers demand and rely on from us a safe, secure and reliable software platform.
As it pertains to security, we firmly believe that security cannot be an afterthought. For automakers and the entire automotive supply chain, security should be inherent in the entire product lifecycle. As part of our ongoing commitment to security, we published a 7-Pillar Cybersecurity Recommendation to share our insight and expertise on this topic. In addition to our safety-certified and secure operating system and hypervisor, BlackBerry provides a host of security products such as managed PKI, FIPS 140-2 certified toolkits, key inject tools, binary code static analysis tools, security credential management systems (SCMS), and secure Over-The-Air (OTA) software update technology. The worlds leading automakers, tier ones, and chip manufacturers continue to seek out BlackBerrys safety-certified and highly-secure software for their next-generation vehicles. Together with our customers we will help to ensure that the future of mobility is safe, secure and built on trust.
Can you elaborate on what is the QNX Hypervisor?
The QNX Hypervisor enables developers to partition, separate, and isolate safety-critical environments from non-safety critical environments reliably and securely; and to do so with the precision needed in an embedded production system. The QNX Hypervisor is also the worlds first ASIL D safety-certified commercial hypervisor.
What are some of the auto manufacturers using QNX software?
BlackBerrys pedigree in safety, security, and continued innovation has led to its QNX technology being embedded in more than 150 million vehicles on the road today. It is used by the top seven automotive Tier 1s, and by 45+ OEMs including Audi, BMW, Ford, GM, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar Land Rover, KIA, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Toyota, and Volkswagen.
Is there anything else that you would like to share about Blackberry Labs?
BlackBerry is committed to constant and consistent innovation its at the forefront of everything we do but we also have a unique legacy of being one of the pioneers of mobile based security, and further the idea of a truly secure devices, endpoints, and communications. The lessons we learned over the past decades, as well as the technology we developed, will be instrumental for helping us to create a new standard for privacy and security as the tsunami of connected devices enter the IoT. Much of what BlackBerry has done in the past is re-emerging in front of us, and were one of the only companies prioritizing a fundamental belief that all users deserve solutions that allow them to own their data and secure communications its baked into our entire development pipeline and is one of our key differentiators. BlackBerry Labs is combining this history with new technology innovations to address the rapidly expanding landscape of mobile and connected endpoints, including vehicles, and increased security threats. Through our strong partnerships with BlackBerry business units we are creating new features, products, and services to deliver value to both new and existing customers.
Thank you for the wonderful interview and for your extensive responses. Its clear to me that Blackberry is at the forefront of technology and its best days are still ahead. Readers who wish to learn more should visit the Blackberry website.
Excerpt from:
AI Experts Rank Deepfakes and 19 Other AI-Based Crimes By Danger Level - Unite.AI
- Classic reasoning systems like Loom and PowerLoom vs. more modern systems based on probalistic networks - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Using Amazon's cloud service for computationally expensive calculations - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Software environments for working on AI projects - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- New version of my NLP toolkit - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Semantic Web: through the back door with HTML and CSS - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Java FastTag part of speech tagger is now released under the LGPL - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Defining AI and Knowledge Engineering - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Great Overview of Knowledge Representation - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Something like Google page rank for semantic web URIs - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- My experiences writing AI software for vehicle control in games and virtual reality systems - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The URL for this blog has changed - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- I have a new page on Knowledge Management - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- N-GRAM analysis using Ruby - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Good video: Knowledge Representation and the Semantic Web - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Using the PowerLoom reasoning system with JRuby - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Machines Like Us - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- RapidMiner machine learning, data mining, and visualization tool - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- texai.org - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- NLTK: The Natural Language Toolkit - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- My OpenCalais Ruby client library - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Ruby API for accessing Freebase/Metaweb structured data - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Protégé OWL Ontology Editor - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- New version of Numenta software is available - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Very nice: Elsevier IJCAI AI Journal articles now available for free as PDFs - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Verison 2.0 of OpenCyc is available - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- What’s Your Biggest Question about Artificial Intelligence? [Article] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Minimax Search [Knowledge] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Decision Tree [Knowledge] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- More AI Content & Format Preference Poll [Article] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- New Planners Solve Rescue Missions [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Neural Network Learns to Bluff at Poker [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Pushing the Limits of Game AI Technology [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Mining Data for the Netflix Prize [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Interview with Peter Denning on the Principles of Computing [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Decision Making for Medical Support [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Neural Network Creates Music CD [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- jKilavuz - a guide in the polygon soup [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Artificial General Intelligence: Now Is the Time [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Apply AI 2007 Roundtable Report [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- What Would You do With 80 Cores? [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Software Finds Learning Language Child's Play [News] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Artificial Intelligence in Games [Article] - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Artificial Intelligence Resources - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Alan Turing: Mathematical Biologist? - April 25th, 2012 [April 25th, 2012]
- BBC Horizon: The Hunt for AI ( Artificial Intelligence ) - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Can computers have true artificial intelligence" Masonic handshake" 3rd-April-2012 - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Kevin B. Korb - Interview - Artificial Intelligence and the Singularity p3 - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Artificial Intelligence - 6 Month Anniversary - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Science Breakthroughs - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Hitman: Blood Money - Part 49 - Stupid Artificial Intelligence! - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Research Members Turned Off By HAARP Artificial Intelligence - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Artificial Intelligence Lecture No. 5 - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- The Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, 2012 - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Charlie Rose - Artificial Intelligence - Video - April 30th, 2012 [April 30th, 2012]
- Expert on artificial intelligence to speak at EPIIC Nights dinner - May 4th, 2012 [May 4th, 2012]
- Filipino software engineers complete and best thousands on Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Course - May 4th, 2012 [May 4th, 2012]
- Vodafone xone™ Hackathon Challenges Developers and Entrepreneurs to Build a New Generation of Artificial Intelligence ... - May 4th, 2012 [May 4th, 2012]
- Rocket Fuel Packages Up CPG Booster - May 4th, 2012 [May 4th, 2012]
- 2 Filipinos finishes among top in Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence course - May 5th, 2012 [May 5th, 2012]
- Why Your Brain Isn't A Computer - May 5th, 2012 [May 5th, 2012]
- 2 Pinoy software engineers complete Stanford's AI course - May 7th, 2012 [May 7th, 2012]
- Percipio Media, LLC Proudly Accepts Partnership With MIT's Prestigious Computer Science And Artificial Intelligence ... - May 10th, 2012 [May 10th, 2012]
- Google Driverless Car Ok'd by Nevada - May 10th, 2012 [May 10th, 2012]
- Moving Beyond the Marketing Funnel: Rocket Fuel and Forrester Research Announce Free Webinar - May 10th, 2012 [May 10th, 2012]
- Rocket Fuel Wins 2012 San Francisco Business Times Tech & Innovation Award - May 13th, 2012 [May 13th, 2012]
- Internet Week 2012: Rocket Fuel to Speak at OMMA RTB - May 16th, 2012 [May 16th, 2012]
- How to Get the Most Out of Your Facebook Ads -- Rocket Fuel's VP of Products, Eshwar Belani, to Lead MarketingProfs ... - May 16th, 2012 [May 16th, 2012]
- The Digital Disruptor To Banking Has Just Gone International - May 16th, 2012 [May 16th, 2012]
- Moving Beyond the Marketing Funnel: Rocket Fuel Announce Free Webinar Featuring an Independent Research Firm - May 23rd, 2012 [May 23rd, 2012]
- MASA Showcases Latest Version of MASA SWORD for Homeland Security Markets - May 23rd, 2012 [May 23rd, 2012]
- Bluesky Launches Drones for Aerial Surveying - May 23rd, 2012 [May 23rd, 2012]
- Artificial Intelligence: What happened to the hunt for thinking machines? - May 25th, 2012 [May 25th, 2012]
- Bubble Robots Move Using Lasers [VIDEO] - May 25th, 2012 [May 25th, 2012]
- UHV assistant professors receive $10,000 summer research grants - May 27th, 2012 [May 27th, 2012]
- Artificial intelligence: science fiction or simply science? - May 28th, 2012 [May 28th, 2012]
- Exetel taps artificial intelligence - May 29th, 2012 [May 29th, 2012]
- Software offers brain on the rain - May 29th, 2012 [May 29th, 2012]
- New Dean of Science has high hopes for his faculty - May 30th, 2012 [May 30th, 2012]
- Cognitive Code Announces "Silvia For Android" App - May 31st, 2012 [May 31st, 2012]
- A Rat is Smarter Than Google - June 5th, 2012 [June 5th, 2012]