Intel, Dell push AI data protection below the operating system
Intel and Dell are embedding data-loss prevention into PC hardware as AI tools draw ever more sensitive corporate data, with nearly 40% of AI-bound data now considered sensitive.
Todd Cramer, Intel’s senior director of business development and security ecosystem, said CrowdStrike’s Falcon data security product has announced its first AI model running on an Intel NPU on a Dell device. “This year, we have Falcon data security from CrowdStrike announcing their first AI model that runs on an Intel NPU on a Dell device,” Cramer said in an interview with theCUBE. “It’s the right time in the use case, because we’ve got all these AI assistants, chatbots. What’s the first thing CISOs are worried about? Data.”
The move reflects a broader effort to harden the full stack below the OS. Lori Zwilling, senior director of software product management at Dell, said adversaries are also moving below the operating system, into firmware and memory. “We believe you need hardware to fight hardware-level threats,” Zwilling said. Hardware-assisted detections from Dell surface signals that endpoint and cloud tools never see, such as BIOS integrity status and firmware tampering alerts.
The same layered logic extends to post-quantum readiness, with work spanning firmware signing and the Intel boot sequence. Zwilling said the coverage now stretches from client devices into AI infrastructure, including AI models, inferencing, containers, and the compute powering enterprise AI. “So we’re talking about full-stack AI security now,” she said.
The interview with Cramer and Zwilling took place during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s livestreaming studio, at Fal.Con 2026. SiliconANGLE noted that theCUBE is a paid media partner for the event, and that CrowdStrike, the sponsor of theCUBE’s coverage, has no editorial control over content.