Cisco looking to partners to take AI security offering to market

Cisco has cut the ribbon on its AI Defense technology, rolling out the option to partners as it reacts to customer needs for increased threat prevention.

The firm’s latest offering tracks artificial intelligence (AI) use in an organisation and introduces guardrails to prevent staff from exposing their employers to risk.

The product is launching in March, but Cisco has already worked with some pre-launch adopters and received positive feedback from those involved, and is urging more to sign up to the early access programme.

Jeetu Patel, executive vice-president and chief product officer at Cisco, said the plan was to get the technology into the hands of an increasing number of partners as its adoption increased.

“We actually think about our partners every step along the way, so AI Defense will be enabled to our partners, and they will be able to take this to market,” he said.

“In the first few months, we’re going to be in the learning process, because we have to see how organisations are going to consume this, because this is all new for everyone right now.

“And then we’ll continue to have the process to enable the partners at scale,” added Patel.

DJ Sampath, head of AI software and platform at Cisco, said partners as well as customers were adapting to an AI world, and developing their skills and capabilities around emerging technologies.

“Partners are also setting up their AI practices,” he said. “We’ve been talking to all of these partners, and they are figuring out ways of being able to serve their customers … how their customers are using AI.

“They’re helping them implement it,” said Sampath. “They’re helping them secure it. And this dovetails really nicely with the efforts that they’re doing to set up their AI practices. It’s really exciting times when it comes to collaborating and working closely with our partners.”

He said customers had to embrace AI to remain in business long-term, but that there were dangers that speed would be at the expense of security, and partners had to help secure development and use of AI tools.

“In a dynamic landscape where competition is fierce, speed decides the winners,” said Sampath. “Fused into the fabric of the network, Cisco AI Defense combines the unique ability to detect and protect against threats when developing and accessing AI applications without trade-offs.”

AI dominated discussions last year, with it clear that cyber criminals were already using the technology to drive increased attacks, putting the pressure on the channel to ensure it could use the technology to counter those threats.

“The adoption of AI exposes companies to new risks that traditional cyber security solutions don’t address,” said Kent Noyes, global head of AI and cyber innovation at World Wide Technology. “Cisco AI Defense represents a significant leap forward in AI security, providing full visibility of an enterprise’s AI assets and protection against evolving threats.”