RiVidium uses AI to improve battlefield communications

PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY — A Prince William County firm is leading the way on the cybersecurity battlefield. It’s ammunition — a mastery in sensory artificial intelligence.

Manny Rivera founded RiVidium in 2008 and the company is at the forefront not only cybersecurity but also sensor security, developing secured communications with a deployed series of small sensors.

“If you’re on a battlefield, you will often need to deploy a sensor to detect movement and terrain. Cyber sensors are similar,” Rivera explained. “Once the sensor is away from you, they have to self-actualize and communicate with a network. When you deploy a sensor without knowledge, anyone else could tamper with it and input malicious information, and that’s where we come in. I developed a mechanism that resists that.

Without these protections, closely-guarded military data may become vulnerable to enemy interception.

“The continued exploitation of information networks and the compromise of sensitive data, especially by foreign nations, leave the United States vulnerable to the loss of economic competitiveness and the loss of the military’s technological advantages,” said Rivera.

Threats to cyberspace pose one of the most serious economic and national security challenges of the 21st century for the U.S. and its allies. Rivera’s research while studying for a Masters degree in security and information insurance from George Washington University led him to develop a patent specifically for cybersecurity which protects infrastructure using three specific protocol channels.

With RiVidium’s security, once a sensor is deployed, it can quickly analyze and develop protection for itself. A process called response acknowledgment is also utilized, which provides clarity that the person receiving information is who they say they are, and that the sensor has not been compromised. “Securing communication between the two parties — the sensor and the receiver — is critical,” said Rivera. “The longer you take to do that, the more likely it is that an outside party could have penetrated.”

AI decentralizes, disrupts the workplace

RiVidium also specializes in cloud computing, biometrics, data center consolidation, and service-oriented architecture.

The company values being an “agile enterprise,” which involves the decentralization of processes.

“Not every action has to come to the CEO in a company,” Rivera said. “If you allow decisions to be made locally, instead of passing everything up to higher offices, you avoid ‘bottlenecking.’” Bottlenecking occurs when a series of actions is slowed down by a single component — in this case, a CEO’s approval. Rivera explained that ideally, only critical decisions come to him, and the staff is given the trust and ability to be in control of their particular sectors.

“You have to be able to allow your staff to make mistakes and learn from them. We operate a lot more efficiently because decisions are being made at the right locations,” he said.

This decentralizing method can revolutionize how many companies work and accomplishes tasks quicker and frees up resources faster.

“Artificial intelligence is the next evolution,” Rivera said. “It is going to powerfully disrupt the workplace, and replace a lot of the processes we do now.” He noted that AI will not only change the office place permanently — it is already present and changing everyone’s lives without the majority realizing it.

“AI is already here,” he said. “90 percent of what Google does, and a big percentage of what social media websites like Facebook and Twitter do, involve AI.”

Learning as it goes

In popular culture, AI is usually stereotyped as self-aware robots — often with an ax to grind against their human makers — but Rivera explained that AI is present today in advanced algorithms that are able to learn as they go. They identify patterns and replicate those patterns until they are able to operate without human oversight.

For example, a search engine like Google is able to gather immense data and learn from it, gaining insight into what the masses are currently interested in, how to analyze information, and even drive media and communication. “Any time you get a recommendation due to past searches or your browsing patterns — these are all forms of AI,” said Rivera.

Self-driving cars are another form of AI that is on the horizon, Rivera said. “That involves learning the patterns of streets, even bumps on the road could be collected and used to avoid next time.”

Another crucial tech advancement is social network crowdsourcing, Rivera added. A good example of that is the popular map app, Waze, which gives users up-to-date information on road conditions and even tips like a police officer stationed five miles away.

The ridesharing app Uber also utilizes crowdsourcing techniques to connect the closest drivers to interested customers. These techniques will likely be featured in the more advanced forms of AI coming down the pike.

“Crowdsourcing allows information to be shared instantaneously among huge amounts of people,” he said. “Everyone becomes more aware with that shared knowledge, and that is powerful.”

The company’s offices are located at Linden Lake Plaza near Manassas.