Cisco injects AI into security

The future of cybersecurity will be defined by the extent to which artificial intelligence (AI) will be roped in by both cybercriminals and defenders.

That means it is no longer optional to rope AI into security.  Cisco acknowledged that some time ago by infusing AI into its Security Cloud, a cross-domain security platform.

Now it is introducing an AI Assistant that it promises “will reframe how organisations think about cybersecurity outcomes and tip the scales in favour of defenders”.

How? Essentially, it ropes in the fundamental promise of AI: “helping make informed decisions, augment existing capabilities and automate complex tasks”.

Cisco says its AI Assistant is trained on one of the largest security-focused data sets in the world, which analyses more than 550-billion security events each day.

“To be an AI-first company, you must be a data-first company. With our extensive native telemetry, Cisco is uniquely positioned to deliver cybersecurity solutions that allow businesses to confidently operate at machine scale, augmenting what humans can do alone,” says Jeetu Patel, executive vice president and general manager of security and collaboration at Cisco.

“This advancement will help tip the scales in favour of defenders, empowering customers with AI built pervasively throughout the Cisco Security Cloud.”

Ransomware and extortion attacks persist at a steady pace, making up 20% of Cisco Talos Incident Response engagements this year, according to the new Cisco Talos 2023 Year in Review Report. Talos also observed an increase in sophisticated attacks on networking devices this past year, particularly by state-sponsored actors.