Cisco Launches AI-Driven Security Solution ‘Hypershield’

• Cisco announced its latest innovation, Hypershield, an AI-backed business solution to protect your software, servers, and data centers.
• The technology relies on three core pillars: Distributed Exploit Protection, Autonomous Segmentation, and Self-qualifying updates that make it faster and smarter than traditional security tools.
• After struggling for the last five years, this could be Cisco's next big thing.

Cisco is planning to take the lead in stepping up the security of businesses through AI thanks to a new collaboration with Nvidia. On Thursday (April 18), the company unveiled Hypershield.

Hypershield is a new security architecture product that will help secure clouds, data centers, and IT environments. It will reportedly use the Nvidia Morpheus cybersecurity AI framework as well as the Nvidia NIM microservices.

Talking about this existing new project, Cisco's executive vice president and general manager of security and collaboration Jeetu Patel said This is not a product, but a new architecture - the first version of something new."

The world is undoubtedly changing. We are entering a new era of digitization where everything is going to be (if it isn't already) AI-enabled. Take the numerous AI assistants for example, such as Amazon's Rufus,

AI tools are everywhere and with increased development comes an increasing need for data centers that can support such tools. So, Patel says, at such a time, we can no longer afford to build the same things. We need to restructure.

What Exactly Is the Cisco Hypershield?Hypershield seems like a wonder project from the outset. If the company's claims are to be believed, it gives you the ability to extend a protective shield for your data anywhere you need, be it servers, software, or network switches.

What makes it different is its fast and automated response to cyber vulnerabilities. I'll now discuss eachof its core features in detail:

Distributed Exploit Protection

Traditional patching can take weeks or even months to secure vulnerability. Hybershield, however, will completely automate the process.

Starting from detecting the vulnerability to testing the patch and then deploying it, everything will happen in the blink of an AI' .Autonomous Segmenting

This is a feature that segments your network automatically. So, when an attacker comprises one part of your system, the rest will still remain out of their reach.

While segmentation is nothing new, Hypershield's autonomous segmentation is smart, dynamic, and automatically adapts to new realities.

Automatic Updates

Last but not least, you get self-qualifying updates that automatically test and deploy new versions of the apps you use.

What makes this feature unique is that the updates are tested in real time, which means you'll have to invest much less time and resources compared to traditional updates.

Hypershield is more capable of handling advanced attacks because it's AI-backed.

Many would bet their lives on the fact that AI has been the best thing that happened to us. However, at the same time, it can undoubtedly also be used for a lot of wrong reasons-think deepfakes, illegitimate voice cloning, and more.

Since AI is more powerful than any other technology we have known before, only an AI-powered tool can defeat it-and that's what Hypershield is all about.

To give you an example, manual threat discovery can take up to four days and patching might take up to 45 days. Imagine how much time you'll waste when you have an AI-powered malicious tool attacking your system every minute!

That's when you'll benefit from Hypershield-which can both find weaknesses and fix them at a breakneck pace.

Why Is This Initiative Important for Cisco?Cisco is one of the largest manufacturers of computer networking equipment. However, the last few years have not been good for it.

For example, in the last 12 months, Cisco's shares have been performing poorly, falling by almost 5% year-over-year. Interestingly, the tech-heavy index increased by around 30%.

The biggest reason behind Cisco's downfall is that public clouds took over Cisco's traditional back-end business. So, now the company needs to come up with a different business model and this new initiative, the Hypershield, might just well be its next big thing that puts it on the map again and catapults it to an upward trajectory.

Also, Hypershield is powered by AI, making it Cisco's first major AI project that can very likely put it on par with top competitors like Google and Microsoft which are admittedly ahead in the race.

Read all about Google's AI push in my in-depth roundup of Google Cloud Next 2024.

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