Cisco unveiled the launch of a new artificial intelligence assistant to support security practitioners and automate key processes.
The technology giant said the Cisco AI Security Assistant represents a “huge step in making AI pervasive in the security cloud.”
The AI tool is able to understand and support security incident triage practices, assist in policy design, and perform root cause analysis in the aftermath of an incident.
The company said this will enable security practitioners to make more informed decisions, increase capabilities, and automate complex tasks in their daily workflow.
Additionally, the tool was trained on one of the largest security-focused datasets in the world, drawing on more than 550 billion daily security events spanning web, email, endpoints, networks and applications.
Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Security and Collaboration at Cisco, said that the launch of the new AI tool will significantly enhance the efficiency of security practitioners and reduce workloads.
“Today’s announcement is a huge step forward,” he said. “This advance will help tip the scales in defenders’ favor, empowering customers with AI built at scale across Cisco Security Cloud.”
“To be an AI-first company, you must be a data-first company. With our end-to-end native telemetry, Cisco is uniquely positioned to deliver cybersecurity solutions that allow companies to operate confidently at machine scale, enhancing what humans can Do it on their own.
Cisco AI Security Assistant: Key Features
Key features and capabilities of the AI tool outlined by Cisco include automated firewall support. The assistant will first run within the company's cloud-delivered firewall management center and Cisco Defense Orchestrator.
The company said this will enable officials to use natural language to structure policies and develop rule recommendations. Additionally, administrators can use the tool to correct misconfigured policies, improve workflow visibility, and simplify configuration activities.
“Using natural language, an administrator can iterate with an AI assistant to do things like discover and identify all policies that control access to the application, define a new policy or rule for the administrator, and implement the policy,” Patel said in a statement. Blog post.
“The AI Assistant can also identify duplicate or misconfigured security policies from thousands of existing policies and provide recommendations for resolving them.”
The AI assistant will also help users improve data center traffic encryption processes through the Encryption Vision Engine.
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The service analyzes sample invoices, including sandboxed malware samples, to determine whether encrypted traffic is transmitting malware. Cisco said the AI tools will support administrators using the platform and improve operational security more broadly.
“Most data center traffic today is encrypted, and the inability to inspect encrypted traffic is a major security concern,” the company said. “Decrypting traffic for inspection purposes is resource intensive and fraught with operational, privacy and compliance issues.”
Cisco is the latest in a string of security companies to offer AI-powered tools so far in 2023. Microsoft unveiled Security Copilot to customers in March, and it has been hailed by industry stakeholders as a potential game-changer.
In May, CrowdStrike unveiled a new AI-powered security tool aimed at increasing efficiency for front-line workers.
Charlotte AI's security assistant works across the company's suite of security and threat intelligence platforms to help analysts identify emerging threats and boost productivity.
The tool provides security analysts with real-time, speed-based insights into security threats and provides natural language recommendations to mitigate risks.
