Cisco launches HyperShield, a new AI product that provides unified security for clouds and data centers

Cisco on Thursday unveiled HyperShield, a new AI security product to secure clouds and data centers in response to addressing the escalating demands placed on IT infrastructure by the AI revolution.

HyperShield leverages AI capabilities to safeguard applications, devices, and data across diverse settings, encompassing both public and private data centers, clouds, and physical locations.

The launch of HyperShield comes on the heels of Cisco’s $28 billion acquisition of Splunk last year, a move strategically positioned to bolster its cybersecurity portfolio in competition with industry giants like DataDog, Elastic, SolarWinds, and Dynatrace. Additionally, this launch underscores Cisco’s collaborative efforts with Nvidia in enhancing the management and security of AI infrastructure.

For Cisco, HyperShield represents a pivotal opportunity to assert its prowess as a formidable player in the AI domain, especially amidst the hefty investments being made by tech titans such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon to establish dominance in artificial intelligence.

Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s executive vice president, said that HyperShield was crafted with the evolving landscape of digital AI assistants like ChatGPT in mind, according to the company press release.

“AI has the potential to empower the world’s 8 billion people to have the same impact as 80 billion. With this abundance, we must reimagine the role of the data center – how data centers are connected, secured, operated, and scaled,” Patel said.

Patel also emphasizes the transformative potential of HyperShield in embedding security seamlessly across diverse endpoints, be it in software, servers, or potentially even network switches, within a distributed system featuring hundreds of thousands of enforcement points.

He added that HyperShield isn’t just a product but represents a paradigm shift in architecture, marking the inception of something entirely new for Cisco.

Hypershield is set to be available to the public in August 2024. With Splunk now part of Cisco, the tech giant pledged to provide customers with unmatched visibility and insights into their digital operations, bolstering their security defenses.

“AI is not just a force for good but also a tool used for nefarious purposes, allowing hackers to reverse engineer patches and create exploits in record time. Cisco looks to address an AI enabled problem with an AI solution as Cisco Hypershield aims to tip the scales back in favor of the defender by shielding new vulnerabilities against exploit in minutes – rather than the days, weeks or even months as we wait for patches to actually get deployed,” said Frank Dickson, Group Vice President, Security & Trust at IDC. “With the number of vulnerabilities ever increasing and the time for attackers to exploit them at scale ever decreasing, it’s clear that patching alone can’t keep up. Tools like Hypershield are necessary to combat an increasingly clever malicious cyber adversary.”

While Cisco leads the charge, it’s not alone in its pursuit of unified security solutions spanning applications, data, and devices across data centers and clouds. Hewlett Packard Enterprise has recently introduced new large AI model integrations for its Aruba networking division, while Broadcom’s VMWare has launched privacy-secure tools enabling companies to leverage generative AI products effectively.