What is AI-Powered Real-Time Event, Threat & Risk Intelligence?

In 2024, a government-run city airport experienced a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. Eight minutes later, a nearby airport was also hit with a DDoS attack. Despite lasting longer than 11 minutes with 3 million hits, the second airport remained unaffected. 

Here’s why: the second airport used an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled real-time monitoring platform that alerted the security team to the original DDoS attack, providing a critical window of time to reinforce its own systems. 

Today’s security teams face a rapidly evolving security landscape. Limited resources (and unlimited data) are converging with growing attack surfaces, along with increased pressure to prevent and mitigate incidents and their potential consequences. However, security teams can’t handle all this on their own. They need tools and technology that streamline security workflows, alert about events as early as possible, and provide all the necessary context (while filtering out the noise). 

What is AI-Powered Real-Time Event, Threat & Risk Intelligence?

The constant evolution in the security landscape and threat environment requires a level-set on terminology, so let’s break it down: 

• Event intelligence: The incident that has happened or is about to happen.
• Threat intelligence: The likelihood of an event happening.
• Risk intelligence: After the likelihood (threat) of the event has been determined, the risk is the impact of that event occurring. 

In the context of a security team, consider an example: What if a lightning storm occurs around a stadium during an event? 

The “event” is the lightning storm. The “threat” is the realistic chance of a lightning strike hitting the stadium. The “risk” is the impact of the lightning strike on employee and attendee safety, physical and digital assets, organizational continuity, etc.

These types of intelligence can exist independently. However, when used together, event, threat, and risk intelligence can evolve with a developing situation. 

Dataminr’s AI-powered real-time event, threat & risk intelligence answers the “what, so what, and now what” behind every security event. It shifts reliance on static security advisories to alerts that dynamically update based on new and developing information.

Today’s Security Challenges

The evolution of AI and a fundamental shift in the security landscape have left security teams with unprecedented challenges. 

Fluctuating levels of global volatility: Turbulent geopolitical complications, perceived societal fragmentation, increasingly severe environmental disasters, rapidly evolving technology, and unstable economics have all impacted how security teams must operate. 

Too much (sometimes bad), fragmented data: Half of executives feel “overwhelmed” with the amount of data they receive daily, and 77% rely on dashboards based on data they “only sometimes or rarely question” despite concerns that static dashboards might miss critical opportunities. Today’s decision-makers are so overloaded with data, they’re struggling to discern what’s key data versus what’s just noise, and what’s good data versus bad.  

A converged risk landscape is developing: While cybersecurity and physical security were once separate areas of concern, today’s risk landscape blurs the line between the two into a converged risk landscape or cyber-physical convergence. Digital attacks can trigger devastating real-world consequences, while physical attacks can directly impact cybersecurity. 

All (leadership) eyes are on security: Security is no longer considered just a departmental or IT problem. Boards now recognize the potential catastrophic impact of a security event to the safety of clients or employees, company finances, and brand reputation. In fact, 89% of security professionals say cybersecurity is now discussed on a board level. With 25% of publicly listed companies reporting a drop in value following a physical security incident, and a global average cost of a data breach at $4.4 million, security issues have been elevated to the top level of leadership.

Security Teams Can’t Move Fast Enough

Ninety percent of C-Suite leaders say the pace of change within their organizations has accelerated in 2025, with less than half feeling “very prepared” to meet that disruption. Further, 84% anticipate this pace will increase further.  

Today’s security teams can no longer rely on the traditional, reactive security plans that were successful in the past. Today’s security landscape requires a proactive, adaptive approach that can react and evolve quickly based on changing situations and behaviors. 

Despite having access to more data than ever before, security strategies are still stuck in a “detect and recover” approach, where teams are left to find damage after the fact. 

Security teams need to close the gap between the realities of today’s security attacks (e.g. increasingly sophisticated, widespread, constantly evolving, etc.) and how organizations respond to these incidents—ideally before incidents take place.

Why Top Security Teams Use AI-Powered Real-Time Event, Threat & Risk Intelligence

Security leaders need to invest in tools that enable them to respond quickly, mitigate effectively, and efficiently partner with various business lines and external teams. It’s not enough to respond to a security incident that has already happened. Today’s leaders need to lean into tools, technology, and strategies that enable a proactive approach in an increasingly interconnected, rapidly evolving, security world. Dataminr’s AI-powered platform was designed with these specific challenges in mind, offering a range of solutions to help security teams protect people, assets, and ultimately the company. 

Process data amounts beyond human capacity

It’s physically impossible for a human to understand, process, and analyze the amount of incoming (and fragmented) data in today’s security world. Dataminr monitors over 1 million global data sources simultaneously in 150 languages, including regional and alternative social media, sensors, live feeds, and deep and dark web sources. 

Evolve the data as the story unfolds

Not only can Dataminr’s AI platform analyze and spot a potential incident amongst the veritable deluge of incoming information, but it can also keep up with that situation as it evolves and develops, providing updates in real-time. Dataminr’s ReGenAI distills multidimensional events into concise event briefs that dynamically update as an incident develops in real time.  

Intel Agents anticipate human questions

Agentic AI, which is AI with the agency to act on its own, anticipate needs, and proactively deliver critical insights, represents the next game-changing technology for security teams. Dataminr Intel Agents harness the power of agentic AI to proactively answer anticipated security questions. This technology has the ability to synthesize vast amounts of information–beyond human capacity–in a split-second, reducing the need for manual research, while adding critical context and deeper insights into the initial alert. 

From chaos to clarity

Dataminr’s AI-powered real-time event, threat & risk intelligence platform delivers more than just alerts, critical information, and real-time information. It offers security leaders a sense of control without feeling constantly at risk of missing a piece of critical security information among all the noise with potentially catastrophic consequences. It provides clarity and confident decision-making in an unstable, evolving threat environment, where proactive leadership and 24/7 real-time monitoring matter most. 

Whether it’s real-time security alerts, streamlined workflows, or AI that asks all the right questions, security leaders need a technology-assist. More security threats and fewer security resources, plus new data scenarios beyond human processing capability, threaten to overwhelm teams. Embracing AI-enabled platforms can reduce noise, highlight critical data, and ensure security leaders are confident in their decisions.