CNME Editor Mark Forker managed to secure an exclusive interview with Aadesh Gawde, Chief Innovation Officer, at OPTIMAS, to find out more about the significance of their new strategic alliance with UiPath and Vistas Global – and how he plans to transform traditional organisational risk management. 
In the current digital landscape, mitigating risks when it comes to security and being compliant in terms of the regulations and rules around data, and the application of AI technologies can be complex to say the least.
The speed at which technology is evolving means businesses to be agile and adaptive if they both want to stay relevant to their customers, and not fall foul of a cybersecurity attack.
During GISEC, CNME was afforded the opportunity to speak to Aadesh Gawde, the dynamic and entrepreneurial force behind OPTIMAS.
OPTIMAS, are specialists in AI-driven cybersecurity solutions, and are focused on delivering futuristic cognitive risk management solutions that utilise their (BTER) Business Technology Exposure and Resilience framework.
Gawde is the Chief Innovation Officer at OPTIMAS, but has enjoyed a distinguished career in technology.
He spent 8 years at EY, and founded Espina Digital Consulting, whilst he is also a member of the Forbes Technology Council.
During GISEC 2024, Gawde spoke to CNME Editor Mark in the immediate aftermath of their announcement of a strategic alliance with UiPath and Vistas Global.
He explained the business model of OPTIMAS and what they are trying to achieve within the IT ecosystem.
“Traditionally, risk and compliance was a process that was managed by a plethora of different people, such as consultants, chief risk officers and other IT security personnel. However, in today’s complex digital world that has so many moving parts, it’s just not humanly possible to be on top of it. What we are trying to do is essentially to connect the all dots, so our platform can autonomously sense, detect, predict, contextualise, respond, recover, govern, manage and communicate in a seamless manner around the clock,” said Gawde.
Gawde explained the role UiPath will play from an RPA perspective in terms of enhancing the services that they provide.
“In the past organisations were compromised based on 10 or 12 points, which were insecure configuration systems, such as access control, insecure traffic, design weaknesses, human weaknesses, so what OPTIMAS.AI has done with our platform is give businesses the ability to continuously and autonomously detect, predict and contextualise. At this inflexion point is where the RPA kicks-in, and that’s where a company like UiPath enters the fold. The RPA can prevent, detect and respond, and our system governs all of this and communicates this information to the relevant business leaders in a non-technical way. The business leaders need to know am I losing money, am I losing customers, is my license becoming impacted, is my reputation at risk, and ultimately is my business at risk,” said Gawde.
Gawde explained the concept behind their BTER framework and said it was ultimately designed to promote and encourage cyber responsibility.
“We have a framework called BETR, it stands for Business Technology Exposure and Resilience. BETR is a body of knowledge for business and IT leaders. We have recently created a non-profit organisation that will be out in the marketplace soon. We are inviting business leaders and professionals to join this community in a bid to create more awareness about BETR and improve our knowledge sharing capabilities within the organisation. As I said, BETR will be a non-profit organisation that had been designed to promote the concept of cyber responsibility,” said Gawde.
In terms of challenges, Gawde said that he sees a commonality in terms of the problems facing many enterprises, but did qualify this by saying he also sees a lot of challenges that are industry-specific.
“Undoubtedly, there is a commonality of challenges when it comes to IT across the board. However, there are niche challenges that are industry-specific. For example, when it comes to energy, utilities and power grids it is critical infrastructure, so there’s health and safety involved because lives are at stake. If you take the telecommunications sector, then the issues are centred around data and customer privacy. A insecure configuration in an Oil and Gas environment could lead to a fatal accident, whereas an insecure configuration in a bank could lead to a data leak, but the impacts are very different,” said Gawde.
When asked about the importance of their new strategic alliance with UiPath and Vistas Global, Gawde said they wanted to ‘transform’ organizational risk management.
“Our goal is to transform traditional organizational risk management. Together, we are dedicated to ensuring customer success and executing outcome-based transformation programs that navigate the complexities of modern risk management—including the advent of AI, IoT, and 5G—providing dynamic and effective solutions tailored for our clients,” said Gawde.
According to the MoU, OPTIMAS remains at the core of this alliance, leveraging the BTER™ framework for risk quantification, validation, and comprehensive enterprise context management.
This allows for a transformation of traditional risk management into a proactive, cognitive methodology.
Gawde added, “UiPath will play a crucial role in this alliance, escalating the capabilities with intelligent automation and orchestration, a significant addition to our strategic approach. Vistas Global introduces an innovative outcome-based customer engagement models, enhancing the adoption and effectiveness of the BTER framework,” said Gawde.
