SAN JOSE — Cisco has introduced a groundbreaking solution designed to safeguard the development and deployment of AI applications within enterprises. Cisco AI Defense provides a comprehensive security framework that addresses the emerging risks posed by AI technologies, ensuring businesses can pursue AI transformation with confidence. The new offering is specifically built to protect against the misuse of AI tools, data leaks, and increasingly sophisticated threats, which traditional security measures are ill-equipped to handle.
Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer at Cisco, emphasized the importance of balancing security with speed, stating, “Business and technology leaders can’t afford to sacrifice safety for speed when embracing AI. Cisco AI Defense is embedded in the network, offering unique capabilities to detect and shield AI applications from threats during both development and use, with no compromises.”
AI-related security risks are intensifying, especially as organizations begin to move from public data to proprietary data for training models. Cisco’s 2024 AI Readiness Index reveals that only 29% of businesses feel adequately prepared to identify and prevent unauthorized AI tampering, exposing the gap in security readiness. AI applications often span across multiple models and clouds, complicating the security landscape. With ownership spread across various stakeholders, from developers to end users, the risk of vulnerabilities grows exponentially.
Cisco AI Defense addresses these critical challenges by providing an integrated safety and security layer that ensures protection at every level of AI development. The solution is designed to handle two key areas of AI security:
- Securing the Development and Deployment of AI Applications: As AI adoption grows, businesses will develop and implement numerous AI applications. Cisco AI Defense offers a unified set of security guardrails to protect AI systems across platforms, enabling developers to innovate without the risk of exploitation. Key capabilities of the solution include:
- AI Discovery: Identifying both shadow and sanctioned AI applications across public and private clouds.
- Model Validation: Automating the testing of AI models to check for security issues, ensuring models operate safely and as expected.
- Runtime Security: Providing ongoing protection against threats such as prompt injection, denial of service attacks, and sensitive data leakage.
- Protecting Access to AI Applications: As employees increasingly turn to AI applications for productivity, securing data and preventing data poisoning becomes critical. Cisco AI Defense provides:
- Visibility: Monitoring all AI-enabled applications used within the enterprise.
- Access Control: Implementing policies that restrict unauthorized access to AI tools.
- Data and Threat Protection: Ensuring ongoing safeguarding against data loss and threats while maintaining compliance with regulatory standards.
Cisco’s solution offers a consistent approach to security, designed for a multi-model environment, and continuously adapts through its self-optimizing system. Powered by Cisco’s machine learning models and threat intelligence from Cisco Talos, AI Defense delivers up-to-the-minute protection, integrated seamlessly with the Cisco Security Cloud. It operates at the network level, allowing enterprises to gain unparalleled control over their AI infrastructure.
Kent Noyes, Global Head of AI & Cyber Innovation at World Wide Technology, highlighted the solution’s significance, stating, “The adoption of AI exposes companies to new risks that traditional cybersecurity solutions don’t address. Cisco AI Defense represents a significant leap forward in AI security, offering comprehensive visibility and protection against evolving threats.”
AI Defense is the latest in a series of AI-driven security innovations by Cisco, including the Cisco Hypershield. This new solution will be available in March 2025, providing enterprises with the tools needed to secure their AI-driven transformations. For more information, visit cisco.com/go/ai-defense.
