Sierra Nevada Improves Crisis Management With Dataminr Pulse

Real-time information, Cybersecurity, Corporate Risk

During a recent Dataminr webinar, Sierra Nevada execs Doug Russell, Director of Security and Safety Data Integration Strategies, and Alexy Blot, Director of Crisis Management and Safety, shared how they use Dataminr Pulse to meet their security needs and ensure they have a proactive and holistic security strategy.

About Sierra Nevada Company (SNC):

Global leader in aerospace and national security
Founded in 1963 and headquartered in Nevada, U.S.
4000+ employees spanning 40+ locations worldwide
Business areas: intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, aviation and security, and mission solutions and technologies

Early warnings mitigate risks faster

Sierra Nevada’s crisis management has been significantly improved since having access to Dataminr Pulse’s real-time alerts, which notify Russell and Blot’s teams of the emerging threats and critical incidents most relevant to their business—all within seconds or minutes of an occurrence.

“A lot of times we don’t know there’s a crisis right away. By using Dataminr with some very specific feed search criteria, we’re able to see stuff going on well before many of our competitors and many of our folks out in the field, and before you hear about them in the news,” said Russell.

Being able to stay abreast of risks in real time has allowed Sierra Nevada security teams to effectively and quickly respond to events, with Russell and Blot seeing a 70% decrease in incident response time.

For example, when telecom company AT&T suffered from a nationwide wireless network outage in February 2024, Russell and his team were alerted as soon as it happened. This was a critical event for Sierra Nevada because a majority of their workforce are AT&T users and thus affected by the outage. Thanks to Dataminr’s real-time information, Russell’s team knew about the disruption before other people in the company and was able to swiftly activate response plans to ensure employees could continue to have connectivity until AT&T service was restored.

Watch On-demand Webinar: Fostering Corporate Collaboration for Improved Crisis Management

Physical security: Protect traveling executives and employees

Russell and Blot have also found Dataminr particularly effective when working to safeguard traveling executives and employees. For instance, when Sierra Nevada’s owners were in Washington D.C. to meet with government officials, the city was experiencing several major public safety incidents.

The team was able to “chart a path for safety” by using Dataminr’s real-time alerting and geovisualization capabilities to stay up-to-date on the events as they unfolded—allowing the teams to see what the impacted areas were and their proximity to the owners.

Blot recounted a personal story, where he used Dataminr Pulse to keep himself safe during a critical safety incident. While on a business trip to New York City, Blot and many other travelers were put into lockdown at the city’s LaGuardia airport and escorted by police without being told why. Blot turned to Dataminr Pulse to see if he could determine what the problem might be and quickly learned there was a bomb threat near the airport. He immediately notified his team and senior leadership of his situation and whereabouts.

Cybersecurity: Detect cyber threats and vulnerabilities

Russell’s team is able to maintain real-time situational awareness and understanding of the cyber threat landscape with Dataminr Pulse for Cyber Risk. It detects and notifies the team of all relevant cyber risks, such as online mentions of Sierra Nevada and vulnerabilities within the company’s system. This allows Russell and his team to “immediately start working to address those issues and to look for those compromise indicators,” said Russell. “It makes the difference between being owned and not being owned.”

Learn More: Are Your Vendors Exposing Your Organization to Vulnerabilities?

Foster strong collaboration to plan for and manage risks

Additionally, Dataminr Pulse’s risk management capabilities enable Russell and Blot’s teams to collaboratively plan for and manage risks and events from end-to-end in one place.

For example, when the teams know an employee or executive will be traveling, they conduct a threat assessment of the destination by studying the areas in close proximity to the traveler’s hotel and work sites, and the types of incidents that happened near them in the past few years by using Dataminr. This provides the security teams and the traveler with a solid understanding of the location, as well as the appropriate response plans in the event of an emergency.

When alerted to an incident, the teams can efficiently coordinate response protocols and critical information flows within Dataminr, which serves as a centralized tool that simplifies and digitizes their risk management workflows.

“We have a crisis management events list which details all the different types of events and what actions should take place. It’s very detailed and in a logical progression,” said Blot. “All of those things reside in Dataminr so that they can be executed digitally instead of on different spreadsheets, applications or paper.”

Russell and Blot’s teams have also found Dataminr useful in facilitating stronger collaboration and transparency between their teams. This includes the ability to monitor risks and events in both the cyber and physical security space and share important information cross-functionally to ensure all key stakeholders have full visibility into potential threats that can impact the business.