Hackers are going to get in. There’s too much money in attacking, and it’s significantly cheaper to steal than to set up real businesses. The key is to get ahead of the bad guys using the cloud and cutting-edge technology, according to Walton Smith (pictured), public sector director of strategic partnerships at World Wide Technology Inc.

“If you looked at the GDP of what’s been taken in ransomware, it’s like the 10th biggest country in the world,” Smith said. “I mean, it’s scary and staggering how much money is lost.”

Smith spoke with Lisa Martin and David Nicholson, co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during AWS re:Invent. They discussed how those involved in digital transformation projects across industries and government can safely take advantage of edge, cloud and hybrid computing. (* Disclosure below.)

More edge computing

“It’s gone from ‘Let me just buy everything that’s out there and that’ll give me security’ to ‘I need to have visibility into my environment,’” Smith said. He believes that his company’s Advanced Technology Center, a mock data center, is the way to go.

ATC is a virtual testing and research lab, with foundations on AWS that lets engineers build out scenarios with innovative and often new technology products. They can then see how those solutions or workflows could fit into their environments. Contributors can be across the globe.

“We can work with the top security providers in the world to show those customers how we can give them that visibility, the protection and the ability to get back up,” Smith said.

Aside from security, Smith also touches on overall edge concepts in the interview, and in particular, how edge pertains to Outposts (AWS’ on-prem, edge-combo cloud product) and a WWT client base — the military.

“Edge because you don’t have time or the bandwidth to get it back into the big cloud. Be able to put that compute, storage and analytics on the edge, to make real-time decisions, taking the cloud down to where the data is,” he said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (* Disclosure: AWS Public Sector sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither AWS nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE

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