CrowdStrike Fal.Con 2025 | Lori Zwilling, Dell Technologies & Todd Cramer, Intel

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More from CrowdStrike Fal.Con 2025

Lori Zwilling

Sr. Director Software Product Management

Dell Technologies

Todd Cramer

Sr. Director Security Ecosystem Business Development, Intel Client Computing Division

Intel CCG

play_circle_outline Revolutionizing User Experience: The Rise of Third-Generation AI PCs and On-Device Computing Capabilities

play_circle_outline Importance of software ecosystem collaboration to optimize AI features on PCs.

play_circle_outline Dell's Pro AI Studio product offering secure AI solutions for clients' applications.

play_circle_outline Emphasis on telemetry integration between Dell, Intel, and CrowdStrike for enhanced security.

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Transcript

Lori Zwilling, Dell Technologies & Todd Cramer, Intel

Lori Zwilling

Sr. Director Software Product Management Dell Technologies

Todd Cramer

Sr. Director Security Ecosystem Business Development, Intel Client Computing Division Intel CCG

Broadcasting from CrowdStrike’s Fal.Con in Las Vegas, theCUBE’s Dave Vellante and Rebecca Knight sit down with Lori Zwilling of Dell Technologies and Todd Cramer of Intel for a sharp look at the rise of AI-powered PCs and what that means for security leaders.

Cramer explains how NPUs are pushing AI to the endpoint, enabling faster, private, on-device processing while slashing cloud costs. Zwilling details Dell’s Pro AI Studio, a toolkit that lets customers securely roll out AI at scale, including in air-gapped environments. Together they reveal how D... Read more

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What defines a third-generation AI PC? add

What factors contribute to the effective integration of AI within a software ecosystem in PC functionality? add

What is Dell Pro AI Studio and what benefits does it provide to customers implementing AI solutions? add

What are the main security features and considerations that Dell and Intel incorporate into their PCs for enterprise clients? add

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Rebecca Knight

>> Good afternoon, everyone. We are in the home stretch of theCUBE's live coverage of Fal.Con 2025. Our first day here. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, alongside my co-host and analyst, Dave Vellante.

Dave Vellante

>> Everybody's partying. Not us, we're working still.

Rebecca Knight

>> Wine is flowing. The hors d'oeuvres are out. I would like to welcome two new guests to the show. We have Todd Cramer, senior director security ecosystem business development at Intel Client Computing Division. Welcome.

Todd Cramer

>> Great to be here. Looking forward to it.

Rebecca Knight

>> And Lori Zwilling, senior director software product management at Dell Technologies. Welcome, Lori.

Lori Zwilling

>> Hey.

Rebecca Knight

>> Great to have you both.

Lori Zwilling

>> Thank you.

Rebecca Knight

>> So, Todd, we're going to talk about third-generation AI PCs.

Todd Cramer

>> Sure.

Rebecca Knight

>> What makes a third-generation AI PC?

Todd Cramer

>> Yeah, AI is everywhere. It's at your PC. I think we're coming up on our third generation of client PCs. And so, when you think about it, the industry's been running AI for years, machine learning, they can do it on the CPU, but it really could impact the user experience. So, really, the GPU is capable of running machine learning in a higher-compute fashion. But now we got the NPU, the neural processing unit, capable of running deep-learning kind of algorithms. And really the specs, the memory, the performance has gotten to a point where you don't need to run AI all in the cloud. You're going to run that compute where it runs best, in a blend across client to the cloud. So, I think that market is evolving. I think IDC, Canalis and others, it's about 41% of PC sold have an NPU, so they're AI PC capable. It's about, in 2025, about 150 million devices. So, we're getting to that crossing the chasm, the tipping point. And then, as our partners, Dell and other OEMs put it into lower, not premium SKUs, mainstream, you're going to see every PC is going to be an AI-capable PC. And so, that's part of it. The other part of it too, I'll say, is we work with the software ecosystem to create the market, right? You don't just have a PC and it runs AI. You've got to work with the security ISVs, any ISV to say, "What model, what AI, what feature would make sense to run on-client?" And that's where you get things, privacy, faster latency, access, or a security event, access to all the data you couldn't send to the cloud to fire a detection in CrowdStrike. So, really, it's a making of an ecosystem, but it starts with the compute, moves to the software. And yeah, that's AI.

Dave Vellante

>> So, what I love about my Dell AI PC is in the NPU is the battery life. I want to start there, that's the best feature. It's awesome. But what's the link to security at the endpoint?

Lori Zwilling

>> Right, right. Well, I think we're better off now with AI and security really for a number of reasons. I mean, first of all, AI is going to be more proactive versus reactive. I mean, this morning at the keynote, we heard all about the coming of highly-automated AI. And yeah, the adversary's going to take advantage of that, but so are our security solutions, which are going to be better able to prevent and detect and mitigate anything that's coming down the pike. It's also real-time. AI is on 24-7, and that's going to have two wonderful benefits, one of which is it's going to detect vulnerabilities and be able to mitigate them much sooner as well as if a breach does get through the mean time to resolution should also be reduced, preventing those threats or those actions from moving laterally and damaging a customer's environment. The other aspect is user behavior baseline capture. When you think about it, the intelligence that we have in the age of AI to really capture how an end user is using a PC and what is normal for them, and then over time, what is not normal for them, whether that's logging in from locations that they don't normally log in from or different file access that's unusual for that end user. AI is going to be able to pick up on those things. And there's this other aspect around locality. We have customers coming to us at Dell asking us for help. How can they run AI on the PC? And there's a number of reasons, one of which is security. They have sensitive data, especially small language models. They don't necessarily want to expose them to the cloud or to third party APIs where they're more vulnerable, right? They want to keep them resident to the device. Some of our customers are air gap, so it's an absolute requirement that they have this capability. And back in March, Dell actually released a solution called Dell Pro AI Studio. And this is a solution that brings a secure toolkit to market for our customers to get to market quicker implementing their AI solutions on AI PCs. And how we do that is we provide pre-validated models, vulnerability tested file integrity checked that they can consume, and then they can create their applications, roll them out across their whole PC fleet, much quicker secure, and there's another benefit. They run cheaper. The other thing we see happening for our customers is several months into running AI in the cloud, they're realizing it can be expensive and it's cheaper to share the load on the AI PC.

Dave Vellante

>> It was interesting, we were just talking to Adam Myers, and I think the Dell deal with CrowdStrike goes back at least two years, maybe even three years now. And he said, "We've locked down the client, the PC, the endpoint. And so, the adversary has now moved on. Now, they're going to identity." So, what are you guys seeing? What does the data show? I mean it like you're having some success. Do you have any maybe concrete examples that you can share where you've had some successes? What are you seeing?

Todd Cramer

>> You're talking about AI for security?

Dave Vellante

>> Yes.

Todd Cramer

>> Yeah, I think that right here at the conference we've got some demos running early models with Falcon Data Protection, that's their DLP platform. And most DLP in the industries have a bad rap, poor efficacy, false positives. It analyzes for corporate users data exfiltration or sensitive data that shouldn't go outside of the enterprise, and that's done with a rigid rule-based approach. Literally, it's got to know the rule that it says username, there's a username and password or that's sensitive data, those rules pick it up. But what we've done is... They've done, actually. They've run an AI model that runs on client, it uses the GPU and is able to analyze documents for all sorts of classification. It does a semantic search, it's natural language, it finds it better. And I think CrowdStrike on some of the earlier data, it's about a three-to-one better advantage versus old rules-based DLP, letting AI do its thing on-client. I think George Kurtz, "We're going to fix DLP." What I'd say running AI on client on these AI PCs is actually fixing it, right? It's clear the data's there. So, there's lots of stories like that that just show if you run AI in the right place, it can do a lot for you.

Dave Vellante

>> And Lori, are you seeing this across Dell's fleets? Are you seeing a noticeable change in the data? I feel like a lot of users don't understand this. I think they think, "Oh AI PCs is all in the future." I go, "Battery life and security, let's start there. I'm in. How much?" And then, all that other good stuff comes. But what are you seeing across your fleet? I mean, you have so much data at Dell.

Lori Zwilling

>> Yeah, right. I think the way I want to respond to that is really a healthy PC is a secure PC, and that's really what a lot of our data is around is how healthy are our PCs? And Dell's doing a really good job. We have unique telemetry, telemetry that's very visible, whether that's security telemetry or manageability telemetry, we make it visible to our customers. We meet our customers where they're at in their portals of choice, whether it's Intune for manageability, whether it's CrowdStrike for security. I mean, these are the key aspects. The other thing we heard in the keynote today is that this is a team sport. I mean that sounds like a canned phrase, but it's authentic in the sense that we can't all do this alone. We need to be partnering with best-in-class. We partner with CrowdStrike, with Intel for very good reason. And I do want to give you an example of something that we're doing and we're even demoing here at the conference. The level of integrations that we have between Intel, CrowdStrike and Dell are unlike anything else in market. Customers come to us and they want to be able to see what's happening below that lid from a security standpoint. And the way they can do that is through the telemetry that Intel and Dell will share, and then we share it through that CrowdStrike platform, that console, it gives the customer one window into the world of their security. And then, we will surface to them, whether it's a BIOS impact detection or whether it's a firmware compromise or an indicator attack. These are all very rich data, very unique data that we surface that they can mitigate. And I believe it was a demo. It was a Fancy Bear Rootkit demo that the team showed and they demonstrated even how that aligns to the MITRE ATT&CK sequence. So, I think for me, the take home is manageability is really key.

Dave Vellante

>> So, that's an integration story, I think-

Lori Zwilling

>> That's right....

Dave Vellante

>> between Intel, Dell and CrowdStrike. Ecosystem doing the work, create that single pane of glass or visibility in one place. Is that right? That's where the engineering takes place?

Todd Cramer

>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean we each have different attack surfaces, how we talk about it on a PC. We do things in silicon that help protect the firmware, the secure and protected boot. Dell's got pieces in the firmware, they've got Dell Trusted Device, you move up the stack. We build things for Windows 11, virtualization-based security, isolation. And then, the EDRs like CrowdStrike. So, each hardware and silicon feature's engineered for a corresponding software security feature. So, it's all done by design, so to speak, but then getting it all integrated into one security system of record, there's no bigger platform than CrowdStrike. What are they up to, 23 modules, right? People like that consolidated stack approach. And they like the fact that Intel, Dell and CrowdStrike are working to make sure these toggle, these switches, when you're running an Intel vPro Dell machine, you've got actual configurations and CrowdStrike that activate, make it better, make it run faster, et cetera.

Rebecca Knight

>> And Lori, is this what customers had been hoping for? When they see this integration and as you said, the team sport, companies working together, is this what they had been requesting?

Lori Zwilling

>> Yes, I mean they're requesting best-in-class security, period. And then, it's on us to deliver on that promise. And yes, we have the most secure PCs in market because of this multi-layered approach that we take by partnering with best-in-class partners. And the integrations are absolutely key because you can't protect what you can't see. And that's exactly what our telemetry integrations do, it's what Dell's proprietary solutions, Dell Trusted Device. We have others that are leveraging our own unique telemetry and surfacing up for mitigation.

Todd Cramer

>> I'll add too is when we help innovate the solutions at Intel and Dell takes them to channel, there's lots of performance testing. Big enterprises want to know what's the efficacy? What's the performance? What if I have other workloads running on that AI PC? That's what Dell does, right? They've set up these PCs, these vPro devices, these applications and benchmark it. That's the way enterprises buy. It's not come buy it. You've got to show the data, and that's what Dell does with an enterprise environment.

Lori Zwilling

>> Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, Todd, because we work very closely with Intel to test our workloads, our AI workloads across XPU, the CPU, GPU, and now the NPU as well. So, you mentioned battery performance. We're very focused on that and making sure that our customers have, if anything, a faster PC than they had before with AI.

Dave Vellante

>> Back in the day when I was at IDC, one of my technical mentors said, "Look, if you want to always ask a good question, ask what happens when something goes wrong? How does recovery occur? What does that process look like?" So, when you think of things like the blue screen of death, you guys have to figure out how to work together to get customers back online faster. How has that evolved? What are you guys doing? What happens when something goes wrong? How do these systems work together to recover?

Todd Cramer

>> Yeah, I'll talk about the Blue Friday incident, right? Intel vPro is a chip-level KVM recovery solution, and it's been deployed for 20 years, and its day in the sun actually really came during that Blue Friday incident. We worked closely with CrowdStrike to help document that as a formal recovery tool. And companies that ran vPro and were able to activate, were able to rebuild the OS in that situation and save millions of dollars. And so, that's one example of recovery. And we're also trying to get that technology easier to deploy. We've got integrations in Intune. We've announced here you can get it in Falcon for IT. So, if you're using CrowdStrike's security and manageability, you can be inside of that console, you can activate that vPro capability. And then, we've also got that in Dell Command Suite and Dell Management Portal. So, really, it's meeting customers in the tool they want. And that's one little contribution we have is that chip-level recovery, and then Dell offers many more things on top of that.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah.

Todd Cramer

>> Oh, go ahead, please.

Rebecca Knight

>> I was going to ask about supply chain because that is top of mind for all CISOs. What are the two of you, Intel and Dell, doing to ensure that these AI PCs have integrity from the entire manufacturing process through deployment?

Lori Zwilling

>> So, Dell and Intel, we work together to secure the devices from the factory to deployment. I mean, that's the scope we're talking about here when we discuss supply chain and there's a number of things that we're doing. I'll give you my first example. We capture a manifest of the componentry and we cryptographically bind it to the device before it shifts, such that, when the end user receives it, if anything has changed, let's say malware's been injected, a component has been swapped, the technology is going to pick up on that and it's going to flag that as an issue. So, that's an example. Some of the other things we do, we ship our devices with Dell Trusted Device. I mentioned that a little bit earlier. So, that's looking for firmware, bios-level tampering. Chassis intrusion is a great example. You might not know that somebody opened the lid, but it will detect that that indeed happened. And we have good old-fashioned physical security. Customers can get anti-tamper tape. And then, it's very obvious then when there's been intrusion. But I do want to mention secure component verification is one of our solutions that customers in North America, and you can have that on-prem, which is wonderful if they're air-gapped. We also offer that worldwide in the cloud. And there's an additional benefit as well. Many of our customers are working on their zero-trust framework and they can have the benefit of device attestation on top of user authentication because of this certificate that comes along with the PC. So, Dell's really best in class when it comes to its supply chain. And these are just a few examples of the unique solutions we have.

Todd Cramer

>> Yeah, I'll add a little bit to that. It also boils into procurement for that AI PC. In today's political climate, we actually offer a SKU, Intel Assured Supply Chain. And so, you can buy and ensure that your silicon was manufactured entirely in a Western-friendly geo, right? Silicon gets made in Malaysia, Vietnam, Europe, North America, governments, financial, they're going to want to buy that PC that you can cryptographically verify was constructed in a Western-friendly geo. So, there's little twists on all of this from supply chain to procurement. Lots of fun.

Dave Vellante

>> That's a SKU? That's genius.

Todd Cramer

>> Yeah.

Dave Vellante

>> I love that. Wow, that's a value add right there. Who came up with that idea? They should get a bonus.

Rebecca Knight

>> So, finally, looking ahead, what should security leaders understand about this hardware-assisted approach? What do you want viewers to leave this interview with?

Todd Cramer

>> Well, I think we're just working hard to... When you think about a device, it's got about 30 hardware security features on it, most IT administrators don't understand all the different things it does. So, we've got a big initiative at Intel to just raise the visibility with our work in MITRE, get people to understand it. Treat your PC as a security control, just like your software security, you need to. It provides defense in depth. So, I'd say from an Intel perspective, that's one initiative we're driving.

Lori Zwilling

>> Yeah, my message would be don't forget about the PC, right? We all know that security is a multi-layered defense mechanism. Defense in-depth, that's what defines it. And the PC is at the base of it all. It comes with hardware, software, its own inner network. I mean, we must secure it and customers, they need to know this. And oftentimes, adversaries can run very stealth underneath that cover and go undetected.

Rebecca Knight

>> A good rallying cry.

Lori Zwilling

>> There's some excitement going on here.

Dave Vellante

>> I'll just say you guys have done some good work, from silicon all the way up and through the PCs and software. So, congratulations. I've watched this partnership evolve and it's for the better of all of us. So, thank you.

Rebecca Knight

>> And Dave's battery life in particular, so he thanks you for that.

Dave Vellante

>> Yeah, sure.

Rebecca Knight

>> Excellent. Well, Todd and Lori, thank you both so much for coming on.

Todd Cramer

>> Thanks. It was fun.

Lori Zwilling

>> Thank you very much.

Todd Cramer

>> Thanks.

Dave Vellante

>> Thank you.

Rebecca Knight

>> I'm Rebecca Knight for Dave Vellante. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE's live coverage of Fal.Con 2025. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech news and analysis.