The Cisco logo will be on display at Mobile World Congress on February 26, 2024 in Barcelona, Spain.
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Enterprise technology giant Cisco Systems on Thursday announced new security architecture products aimed at protecting data centers, clouds, and other IT environments with the help of AI.
The product, called HyperShield, uses AI to protect applications, devices, and data across public and private data centers, clouds, and physical locations, according to a company press release.
HyperShield is the result of the company's $28 billion acquisition last year of Splunk, a cybersecurity company that competes with the likes of DataDog, Elastic, SolarWinds and Dynatrace. This release also builds on Cisco and his Nvidia partnership on managing and securing AI infrastructure.
At a time when tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are spending billions of dollars to become leaders in artificial intelligence, this is a big opportunity for Cisco to prove itself as a serious player in AI.
“This is not a product, it's a new architecture. It's the first version of something new,” Jeetu Patel, Cisco's executive vice president and general manager of security and collaboration, said in an interview with CNBC this week.
Other brands are moving in a similar direction. Hewlett Packard Enterprise recently announced the integration of new large-scale AI models for its Aruba networking division, and Broadcom's VMWare announced tools that allow enterprises to use generative AI products in a privacy-protected manner. .
Patel explained that HyperShield acts as a “shield of security,” applying security directly to what needs to be protected.
Patel said the technology works more like a “fabric” than a “fence,” allowing cyberworkers to better understand software vulnerabilities across applications.
The product features autonomous segmentation capabilities aimed at helping businesses avoid vulnerabilities and breaches. This allows Cisco's AI to break down computer networks into smaller pieces, improving performance and security.
Another feature called self-qualified upgrades allows organizations to automate the process of testing and deploying upgrades.
Patel said organizations with critical infrastructure such as oil rigs, Internet of Things (IoT) devices and hospital MRI machines need to be especially careful when upgrading their systems.
Patel said Cisco's HyperShield technology was designed with the new world of digital AI assistants in mind, such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and other advanced tools.
“We are moving from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance where digital AI assistants are in everything,” Patel told CNBC. “Those assistants live in the data center.”
“So given the increased requirements this places on data centers and how they are built, we need to redesign them rather than build more of the same,” Patel said.
He pointed out that security architectures like HyperShield had not been built before because many of the architectures across the industry were created in a time when modern applications and technologies such as generative AI did not exist.
Patel said it currently takes about four days for network vulnerabilities to be discovered before they can be exploited, and it takes even longer to patch them, at an average of 45 days.
He said new technologies such as AI and machine learning are needed to identify and patch vulnerabilities and compress them from days to minutes.
“Previously, we had to work under the assumption that a breach had occurred; [and that] When someone walked in, there was lateral movement and we had to identify it before we could react,” Patel told CNBC.
“We need to move to a position where we can anticipate and respond.”
Cisco stock has underperformed the Nasdaq over the past 12 months, dropping nearly 5% year-over-year, even as its tech weight has risen more than 30%.
Over the past five years, it has been an even worse investment than the broader sector. The stock has fallen 14% over the period, lagging the Nasdaq's 95% rise.
See chart…
A comparison of Cisco's year-over-year stock price performance to the performance of the Nasdaq Composite Index over the same period.
Cisco has long been the world's largest manufacturer of computer networking equipment, including switches, modems, and routers. The company is strengthening its cybersecurity business to meet customer demand and drive growth.
This is where the company's blockbuster acquisition of Splunk comes into play. Splunk's technology helps companies monitor and analyze data to minimize the risk of hacking and resolve technical issues faster.
As the public cloud further eats away at Cisco's traditional backend business, the company needs to find new and bigger revenue streams, and cybersecurity has emerged as a key bet.
– CNBC's Rohan Goswami and Jordan Novelt contributed to this report
