Latest news with #RonWilliams
Yahoo
19-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Jacobs lands $137M contract to manage US Virgin Islands rebuild
This story was originally published on Construction Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Construction Dive newsletter. Award: Program management Value: $137 million Location: U.S. Virgin Islands Client: Virgin Islands Public Finance Authority Jacobs is heading to the Caribbean to help steer an infrastructure rebuild effort across the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Dallas-based construction company recently secured a $137 million program management contract from the Virgin Islands Public Finance Authority, according to an April 15 news release. The deal supports the Rebuild USVI initiative, the territory's recovery plan following the damages of hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017. Under the three-year agreement, Jacobs will work alongside the U.S. Virgin Islands' Super Project Management Office to guide the recovery and reconstruction of critical infrastructure across St. Croix, St. Thomas and St. John. That includes hospitals, schools, roads, power infrastructure, and water and wastewater utilities, according to the release. 'The islands are home to nearly 90,000 people who depend on safe schools, reliable transportation, consistent utility services and access to healthcare,' said Ron Williams, executive vice president at Jacobs. 'Further, with tourism as the economic engine, it's essential we prioritize efforts quickly and make the islands' infrastructure more resilient for the future.' Jacobs will also provide advisory and consulting services related to project planning, environmental management, logistics, supply chain and workforce challenges, according to the company. The award adds to Jacobs' recent momentum in the infrastructure and water space. CEO Bob Pragada said earlier this year that the firm continues to see strong demand across key sectors, including water, environmental services and advanced facilities, despite tariff-related concerns. The Virgin Islands Public Finance Authority's Office of Disaster Recovery, which manages $23 billion in federal recovery funds for the Virgin Islands, selected Jacobs based on its pricing, resources, technical expertise and strategic partnerships, said Adrienne Williams-Octalien, ODR director. 'We are excited to have Jacobs' support as we continue working to rebuild a stronger, more resilient community while ensuring full compliance with our funding requirements,' said Williams-Octalien. Recommended Reading Jacobs sees strong demand despite tariff uncertainty
Associated Press
15-04-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Jacobs Awarded Program Management Contract to Rebuild U.S. Virgin Islands
Critical infrastructure includes hospitals, schools, transit corridors, water and power projects Advisory and consulting services will guide future project phases DALLAS, April 15, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Jacobs (NYSE: J) was contracted by the Virgin Islands Public Finance Authority to deliver program management services for the 'Rebuild USVI' initiative – the U.S. Virgin Island's plan to recover and rebuild following hurricanes Irma and Maria. With a contract value of $137 million, Jacobs will work with the U.S. Virgin Islands' Super Project Management Office on simultaneous, critical infrastructure projects, including hospitals, schools, transit corridors, power, water and wastewater utilities. 'Rebuilding is critical for St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John. The islands are home to nearly 90,000 people who depend on safe schools, reliable transportation, consistent utility services and access to healthcare,' said Jacobs Executive Vice President Ron Williams. 'Further, with tourism as the economic engine, it's essential we prioritize efforts quickly and make the islands' infrastructure more resilient for the future.' Jacobs has a proven track record of rebuilding critical infrastructure following severe weather events, incorporating resiliency, social value and equity into its programs. During the three-year contract, Jacobs will also provide advisory and consulting services focused on future project planning, environmental management, logistics, supply chain and workforce challenges. The Office of Disaster Recovery (ODR) within the Virgin Islands Public Finance Authority oversees the territory's $23 billion in federal funding awarded after the 2017 hurricanes devasted the territory. Director Adrienne Williams-Octalien emphasized ODR's commitment to the Super Project Management initiative, highlighting Jacobs' selection for 'Rebuild USVI' based on responsiveness to the request for proposal, demonstrated expertise, pricing, resources, innovation and strategic partnerships. 'We are excited to have Jacobs' support as we continue working to rebuild a stronger, more resilient community while ensuring full compliance with our funding requirements,' said Williams-Octalien. Ranked as No.1 in Program Management by Engineering News-Record, Jacobs delivers today's most complex, challenging infrastructure and recovery projects. Jacobs has supported efforts like the Port of San Francisco Waterfront Resilience Program, which is adapting 7.5 miles of the city's waterfront to be resilient to earthquakes, coastal storms and sea level rise; reinstating vital power infrastructure in the Philippines following devastating earthquakes; returning and maintaining essential services to the Puerto Rican community following Hurricane Maria; and continued on-the-ground assistance with ground assisting with FEMA disaster-related operations throughout the U.S. and its territories. At Jacobs, we're challenging today to reinvent tomorrow – delivering outcomes and solutions for the world's most complex challenges. With approximately $12 billion in annual revenue and a team of almost 45,000, we provide end-to-end services in advanced manufacturing, cities & places, energy, environmental, life sciences, transportation and water. From advisory and consulting, feasibility, planning, design, program and lifecycle management, we're creating a more connected and sustainable world. See how at and connect with us on LinkedIn, Instagram, X and Facebook. Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are statements that do not directly relate to any historical or current fact. When used herein, words such as 'expects,' 'anticipates,' 'believes,' 'seeks,' 'estimates,' 'plans,' 'intends,' 'future,' 'will,' 'would,' 'could,' 'can,' 'may,' and similar words are intended to identify forward-looking statements. We base these forward-looking statements on management's current estimates and expectations, as well as currently available competitive, financial and economic data. Forward-looking statements, however, are inherently uncertain. There are a variety of factors that could cause business results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements including, but not limited to, uncertainties as to the impact of the recently completed separation transaction pursuant to which we spun off and merged our Critical Missions Solutions and Cyber & Intelligence government services businesses with Amentum (together, 'new Amentum ") on Jacobs' and new Amentum's businesses, the timing of the award of projects and funding and potential changes to the amounts provided for under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and other legislation related to governmental spending, as well as general economic conditions, including inflation and the actions taken by monetary authorities in response to inflation, changes in interest rates and foreign currency exchange rates, changes in capital markets, the possibility of a recession or economic downturn, increased uncertainty and risks, including policy risks and potential civil unrest, relating to the outcome of elections across our key markets and elevated geopolitical tension and conflicts, among others, and the impact of any future pandemic or infectious disease outbreak, including the related reaction of governments on global and regional market conditions, among others. For a description of some additional factors that may occur that could cause actual results to differ from our forward-looking statements, see the discussions contained under Item 1 - Business; Item 1A - Risk Factors; Item 3 - Legal Proceedings; and Item 7 - Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations in our most recently filed Annual Report on Form 10-K, and Item 2 - Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations; Item 1 - Legal Proceedings, as well as the company's other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company is not under any duty to update any of the forward-looking statements after the date of this press release to conform to actual results, except as required by applicable law. For press/media inquiries: [email protected] View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Jacobs
Forbes
03-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Stop Sleeping On AI: Why Security Teams Should Embrace The Technology
Ron Williams is the CEO and founder of . getty Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a futuristic tool for cybersecurity. It's gone mainstream. Threat actors have integrated AI into their operations with alarming success, using tools like WormGPT, GhostGPT and even legitimate platforms like Google's Gemini AI to scale their attacks. Google's Threat Intelligence Group recently detailed how state-sponsored actors have been abusing Gemini AI to enhance reconnaissance, scripting and privilege escalation. These factors lead to a harsh reality: The asymmetry of power in AI between cybersecurity and bad actors is growing, and security teams are falling behind. If defenders don't start using AI to automate workflows, mitigate threats and improve incident response, they risk being perpetually outpaced by modern attackers. The time to act is now, not after attackers have perfected the use of AI in their operations. ChatGPT democratized consumer AI access, revolutionizing a whole range of industries. However, cybercriminals quickly recognized its potential for malicious usage, and just a year after its launch, discussions on cybercrime networks about exploiting AI exploded, leading to an increase in AI-based attack strategies. Hundreds of thousands of ChatGPT accounts were being bought and sold on underground markets, and by mid-2023, WormGPT, a malicious chatbot designed to enhance business email compromise attacks and spear-phishing campaigns, sent shockwaves through the industry. WormGPT was marketed as an AI tool specifically trained on malicious datasets to improve cybercrime operations, prompting headlines warning of AI-powered cybercrime on the rise. But WormGPT was just the beginning. Variants like FraudGPT, DarkBERT (not to be confused with DarkBART) and GhostGPT followed. Fast-forwarding to today, cybercriminals have found multiple ways to weaponize AI for their operations: • Bypassing ethical constraints: Mainstream AI models like ChatGPT and Claude refuse to generate phishing emails. However, attackers discovered ways to manipulate them into compliance using prompt engineering. • Masquerading legitimate chatbots as malicious chatbots: Some cybercriminals have wrapped jailbroken AI instances within custom interfaces, branding them as their own evil variants and selling access to others. • Training AI models on malicious datasets: Rather than relying on trickery, some groups have trained their own AI models, fine-tuning them with cybercrime-related data to generate more accurate attack strategies. This is essentially how WormGPT and similar tools evolved within months. Why Security Teams Are Hesitant Despite clear evidence of AI's role in advancing cybercrime, many security teams remain hesitant to embrace AI defenses. This reluctance sometimes stems from three key concerns: lack of trust in AI, implementation complexity and job security fears. Lack Of Trust In AI Many cybersecurity professionals view AI as a 'black box' technology and are concerned that it's difficult to predict how AI will behave in a live security environment. Security teams worry that if something goes wrong, they won't be able to remediate the issue due to their lack of understanding of the model's decision-making process. However, while these concerns are valid, they can be addressed. Many AI-based workflows are built on well-documented APIs that offer transparency and allow customization. If security teams take the time to understand how AI-powered tools function in practical applications, much of their skepticism could be alleviated. Implementation Complexity Another major roadblock is the perceived difficulty of integrating AI into legacy security infrastructure. A lot of organizations assume that AI adoption requires a fundamental overhaul of existing systems, which is daunting and expensive. However, security teams can start small by identifying repetitive, time-consuming tasks that AI can automate. Take vulnerability management, for instance. Consultants spend a lot of time triaging vulnerabilities, mapping them to affected assets and prioritizing remediation efforts. AI can optimize this by automatically correlating vulnerabilities with exploitability data, assessing business impact and recommending remediation priorities. A simple exercise to test AI's effectiveness is to take a common, repetitive security task and design an AI-assisted workflow to replace it. Even partial automation can yield a large return on investment in saved time and improved accuracy. Job Displacement Some security professionals fear that widespread AI adoption could automate them out of a job. While discussions about AI replacing analysts entirely are common in the industry, AI should be viewed as an augmentation tool rather than a replacement. The focus should be on promoting this perspective. Organizations that upskill their employees to work alongside AI will develop a stronger, more efficient security team. The bigger point here is that AI won't eliminate security teams—it will empower them. By automating time-consuming and mundane tasks, security analysts can focus on higher-value work, like investigating more complex threats, threat hunting and incident response. How AI Helps Security Teams Whether operating within a security operations center (SOC) or following a more agile approach, all security teams encounter repetitive tasks that can be automated. AI-powered security solutions can assist with this by: Automating repetitive alert investigations, reducing analyst burnout and improving response times. Improving detection capabilities by identifying patterns in large datasets faster than human analysts. Consider a typical security analyst's workflow: They receive an alert, analyze it, extract indicators of compromise, query threat intelligence databases, determine if it's a genuine threat, document the findings and respond accordingly. AI automates much of this process, alleviating manual operational burdens. The benefits of AI and autonomous agents extend beyond the SOC; AI can also improve web application security, agile security in software development lifecycles, penetration testing and threat intelligence gathering. Security teams don't need to overhaul their entire infrastructure overnight. Incremental AI adoption can have immediate benefits. The Cost Of Inaction AI is not a passing trend—it's the present and future of cybersecurity. Attackers are not waiting for defenders to catch up. They are actively refining AI-augmented attack methods, making their operations faster, more scalable and more effective. Security teams must recognize that the only way to counter AI-based cyber threats is to fight fire with fire. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
