Why I Joined Todyl: Spotlight on David Dewey

We sat down with David Dewey, Chief Technology Officer at Todyl, to discuss the challenges he’s witnessed in cybersecurity and how that led him to Todyl.

What cybersecurity challenges do small businesses and mid-market companies face?

I’ve worked in the security industry for well over 20 years. Throughout my time, a common theme is that small businesses and mid-market companies are woefully underserved. The industry is packed with point solutions and those trying to make sense of them.  

This point solution-centric approach is only marginally manageable if you are a large company with a team full of engineers to handle the integration, administration, and orchestration of those solutions. Then, of course, there is the challenge of data.  Wrangling the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of events per second becomes a daunting task—let alone trying to make sense of that data.

It became abundantly clear to me that the status quo is too complex, inefficient, and costly for small businesses and mid-market companies to get the security they need.  

What role do you see artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) playing in cybersecurity?

With the advancements of AI and ML in recent years, one would think that these challenges would start to diminish a bit. Unfortunately, it’s been slow progress given the complexity of the systems that the collective industry amassed over the last few decades.  Progress also seems to be slowed by a complete misuse of AI and ML.

Watching the evolution of ML and (or into) AI over the past several years has been particularly frustrating.  So many software vendors (both in security and out) are using AI for what amount to merely parlor tricks.  They are using what is likely the most powerful innovation of our lifetimes to automatically write simple blurbs of text that users rarely even use.

What about the challenge and opportunity brought you to Todyl?

I’m super thrilled to be at Todyl. Since the beginning, the team designed the platform to work together, share data, and empower smaller teams to outpunch their weight when compared to larger teams wrangling their massive behemoth.  

I have always been very interested in building highly scalable systems.  With Todyl’s ever-growing customer base, scaling our platform to support hundreds of thousands of customers and millions of agents worldwide is an exciting challenge.

Our AI vision at Todyl is completely different. Our team’s focus is on making a real impact for our users. By leveraging some extremely creative uses of AI and ML, we have incredible advancements coming in the months and quarters ahead that will further empower IT professionals with the tools, insights, and automation needed to defend against ever-changing threats.

By feeding our AI/ML capabilities with data from our worldwide presence, Todyl has an opportunity to make real advancements in cybersecurity. I'm incredibly excited to help drive our vision forward.