Cisco spotlights generative AI in security, collaboration

Looking to harness a decade of AI/ML development Cisco this week previewed generative AI-based features it will soon bring to its Security Cloud service and Webex collaboration offerings.

Cisco said it was looking meld the network and security intelligence it has amassed over the years with the large language models (LLMs) of generative AI to simplify enterprise operations and address threats with practical, effective techniques.  

The first fruits of this effort will be directed at the Cisco Security Cloud, the overarching, integrated-security platform that includes software such as Duo access control and Umbrella security as well as firewalls and  Talos threat intelligence access all delivered via the cloud.

During his Cisco Live! keynote, Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s executive vice president and general manager of security and collaboration, said that an AI-based policy engine, Policy Assistant, will be available by the end of the year in Security Cloud. The idea is that the assistant will use natural language interfaces to simplify policy management for admins, he said. 

Security and IT administrators will be able to describe granular security policies and the assistant willl evaluate how to best implement them across different aspects of their security infrastructure, Patel said.

At the Live! event, Cisco demoed how a generative Cisco Policy Assistant can reason with the existing set of  firewall policy rules to implement and simplify them within the Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center. Cisco says it is the first of many examples of how generative AI can reimagine policy management across the Cisco Security Cloud.

“Basically going forward you won’t need to have a Ph.D. to manage a firewall policy,” Patel said.

In addition, he said the security assistant will let customers describe and contextualize events across email, the web, endpoints, and the network to tell security operation center (SOC) analyst exactly what happened, the impact, and best next steps to take to remediate problems and set new policies.

The SOC Assistant will provide a comprehensive situation analysis for analysts, correlating intel across the Cisco Security Cloud, relaying potential impacts, and providing recommended actions with the goal of reducing the time needed for SOC teams to respond to potential threats, he said.

“Cisco will continue to add generative AI capabilities to our entire security portfolio over time,” Patel said.

Generative AI will also be a part of features—to be disclosed in the future—in Cisco Networking Cloud unveiled at this week’s Cisco Live! The Networking Cloud will involve a broad range of software and cloud-system integration and has as its ultimate goal to converge networking platforms over time, culminating in a unified management platform.  

In addition, Cisco recently announced plans to buy Armorblox, a six-year-old AI vendor, to help create “an AI-first Security Cloud.”

“Leveraging Armorblox’s use of predictive and generative AI across our portfolio, we will change the way our customers understand and interact with their security control points,” wrote Raj Chopra senior vice president and chief product officer for Cisco Security in a blog announcing the pending acquisition.

The use of generative AI is potentially a powerful tool for enterprises but its still early yet and customers should start to get a handle on it now, said Neil Anderson, area vice president of Cloud & Infrastructure Solutions at World Wide Technology (WWT), a technology services provider and Cisco business partner.

WWT recently issued a report on the use of generative AI in the enterprise that stated: “For now, generative AI should be treated with caution. Unless using a proprietary generative AI solution, the technology is not ready for critical or semi-critical enterprise use cases. Governance and risk management must be top of mind for IT leaders being inundated with requests for how best to implement the technology.”

“We expect that as people get their arms  around AI and figure out how they will actually use this technology securely, it will become valuable—because it’s a little like the Wild West right now,” Anderson said.

Shamus McGillicuddy, research director for the network-management practice at Enterprise Management Associates, said network pros recognize that AI/ML can optimize and automate IT operations, so it makes sense for Cisco to make a big investment in it.

“It will take time for customers to learn to trust this stuff,” he said. “If it works, AI features will prove their value fairly quickly. Right now, much of this is about vision and a commitment to product development. Automated troubleshooting and predictive capacity management will be key use cases.”

Cisco’s security portfolio won’t be the only system where generative AI will impact customers.

The company introduced a variety of AI-based features for its flagship collaboration Webex Suite of software as well.

For example, a new catch-me-up feature lets users ask questions about meetings or chats they missed. The idea is that customers can find out the status of a project or get an overview of what was discussed in a previous meeting they might have missed. In addition, users can simply generate intelligent summaries of meetings with action items from a Webex meeting or Vidcast, Cisco’s video messaging tool.  

Also a new conversation capability in Webex Contact Center will provide agents with a fast, automated way to consume long-form text from digital chats with customers as well as easing post-call wrap-up and resolution with customers.

The idea with the new AI features within Webex is to save times and help make faster, smarter decisions by analyzing vast amounts of information in real-time, Cisco stated. 

“AI empowers organizations to tackle the challenges of hybrid work head-on, bridging gaps in real-time information, streamlining manual processes, reducing unnecessary meetings, and ultimately delivering exceptional experiences for employees and customers,” Cisco stated in a blog post.

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Cisco Builds On Security Platform Strategy, Unveils Unified Networking Platform

Following in the footsteps of its Security Cloud platform, the tech giant debuts its Cisco Networking Cloud strategy at Cisco Live 2023 to the delight of channel partners.

Cisco Systems is taking a page out of its security book by introducing Cisco Networking Cloud, a platform approach to managing the entire on-premises and cloud-based networking environment, at Cisco Live 2023.

The tech giant last June unveiled Cisco Security Cloud, the company’s security plan for the future that includes a unified, open-standards-based platform for securely connecting people, applications and devices located anywhere. Now San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco is doing the same thing on the networking front with Cisco Networking Cloud.

“Cisco owns the network,” said Chris Konrad, area vice president of global cyber for St. Louis-based Cisco Gold partner World Wide Technology.

Customers are looking to consolidate and reduce technical debt by moving to a platform approach for their IT needs, he added. “For us, it’s a big deal. It gives us an opportunity to go in and have a new conversation with [customers] about consolidation,” Konrad said.

[Related: Cisco Security Execs On Bringing Networking, Cybersecurity To Market With Momentum ‘Like You’ve Never Seen Before’ ]

The company’s vision for Cisco Networking Cloud is to make managing networks easier by converging its disparate offerings over time to create a unified network management platform that works on-premises and in the cloud, Rebecca Stone, senior vice president of customer solutions marketing and CMO of Cisco Meraki, told CRN.

Cisco Networking Cloud is being driven in part by the success of the cloud-based Meraki portfolio, as well as Cisco’s core Catalyst portfolio, Stone said.

“[It’s about] wanting to make sure that our customers can use both of those methodologies in how they think about deploying their networks in a way that fits them, rather than maybe the siloed way that they’ve approached it in the past,” she said. “The idea here is to help unify things so that as IT, they can deploy things faster with more automation and simplicity in the use of the tools, which allows them to focus their energy on delivering a better experience to their customers.”

Cisco Networking Cloud won’t just simplify things from the customer’s perspective, it’s also a benefit to partners, Stone said.

“Both partners and customers are [saying], ‘Simplify the tools that you’re selling to us, simplify how we buy from you, and then help us to understand the outcomes and how your tools fit in the outcomes that we’re looking for,’” she said. “Just selling them the tools without giving them the solution for how to pull all these things together into one experience isn’t working for them.”

Taking a platform approach to networking will open the door for channel partners to have tighter integration between security and network infrastructure, said Lane Irvine, network business solutions director for Vancouver, British Columbi-based Cisco Gold partner Long View Systems.

“Even as a managed services partner, we kind of have two different views of the environments—you don’t have that single view. I think this allows us ... to see a much better opportunity to create a more integrated platform across security and networking,” Irvine said.

The first steps toward progress on the Cisco Networking Cloud strategy include a few features that the company rolled out Tuesday, including single sign-on to simplify access across Cisco networking platforms, an API key exchange/repository that when linked with single sign-on can make it easier for disparate Cisco networking platforms to connect and exchange data through automation, cross-platform navigation and a common user interface across Cisco networking platforms, according to the company.

Cisco’s efforts to simplify networking also include some rebranding and expanded licensing options. Cisco’s Viptela-powered SD-WAN offering is now branded as Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN. The company said that its Cisco Catalyst switch line now combines hardware and software support into a single subscription.

Gina Narcisi is a senior editor covering the networking and telecom markets for CRN.com. Prior to joining CRN, she covered the networking, unified communications and cloud space for TechTarget. She can be reached at gnarcisi@thechannelcompany.com.

Cisco simplifies its product portfolio with new Cisco Networking Cloud platform

Cisco Systems Inc. today introduced a new platform that will enable customers to manage its networking products through a common interface.

The platform introduced by Chief Executive Chuck Robbins (pictured) at the annual Cisco Live 2023 conference taking place this week in Las Vegas, is called the Cisco Networking Cloud. It’s rolling out alongside enhancements to several of the company’s existing offerings, including its ThousandEyes infrastructure monitoring service and Catalyst product portfolio.

The newly announced Cisco Networking Cloud will enable administrators to manage on- and off-premises network infrastructure in one place. According to the company, the platform will make it easier to troubleshoot technical issues. It also includes automation capabilities for streaming common administrative tasks.

The drive for simplicity echoes what customers have been asking for, given Cisco’s voracious appetite for acquisitions, which has created some siloes in its product offerings. “The company’s mandate is to integrate the piece parts of its intricate offerings to create more facile and seamless experiences for customers,” Wikibon Chief Analyst Dave Vellante wrote in a recent Breaking Analysis on Cisco.

“The Cisco Networking Cloud converges and connects fragmented platforms that exchange data through automation,” detailed Jonathan Davidson, the executive vice president and general manager of Cisco’s networking business. “It replaces isolated pockets of data with telemetry, assurance, and proactive analytics across the network.”

As part of its feature set, the Cisco Networking Cloud will provide a single sign-on feature for several of the company’s networking products. Single sign-on is a technology that allows users to log into multiple systems at once using one set of login credentials. Thanks to the capability, administrators won’t have to separately log into different Cisco products, which should streamline the user experience.

The Cisco Networking Cloud also includes an API key exchange that can be used with the new sign sign-on feature. It’s designed to ease the process of moving data between the company’s products. 

Data center systems often require the ability to exchange information with one another. A switch, for example, may send error logs to a monitoring tool for analysis. Systems send data to one another via application programming interfaces.

Before a system can transmit information to the API of another device or application, it has to provide an API key. That’s a kind of code used to verify that cybersecurity requirements are met. The new API key repository included in Cisco Networking Cloud makes it easier to manage such codes, which will simplify the task of moving data between the company’s products.

“Only Cisco has the portfolio, experience, and partner ecosystem to bring together campus and branch, data center, compute, IoT and SD-WAN to optimize outcomes using one networking management platform to deliver unified experiences,” Davidson said.

Besides day-to-day network management, Cisco is also simplifying how customers purchase its products. The company today detailed a new pricing model that will enable enterprises to buy hardware and software support in a single subscription. The pricing, which will initially become available for Cisco’s Catalyst line of switches, promises to ease procurement for enterprises.

In conjunction, the company is rolling out a new way of purchasing its Catalyst SD-WAN platform. The platform is used by organizations to establish network connections between disparate locations such as offices and data centers. It was known before today as Cisco SD-WAN.

According to the company, companies can now buy the newly renamed Catalyst SD-WAN platform under a subscription model. Cisco says that the platform takes a few minutes to deploy after a subscription is purchased. Moreover, the company will help customers manage their Catalyst SD-WAN to ease their day-to-day technology operations.

At Cisco Live 2023 today, the company also debuted a new version of its ThousandEyes network monitoring platform. ThousandEyes became part of Cisco through a 2020 acquisition reportedly valued at $1 billion. The platform enables companies to detect and troubleshoot technical issues in their networks, as well as monitor the carrier infrastructure through which their application traffic travels.

ThousandEyes is receiving a tool called Event Detection as part of today’s update. According to Cisco, the tool can automatically spot technical issues as well as identify which system they affect. ThousandEyes can spot issues in network devices, servers and other components of a company’s infrastructure.

Event Detection is rolling out alongside a second new feature called AWS Path Enrichment. It will provide administrators with additional data on network connections in Amazon Web Services environments. The feature can identify the AWS service involved in processing application traffic, as well as other details such as the cloud data center through which the traffic traveled.

The enhancements to ThousandEyes’ analytics capabilities are joined by new product integrations. Thanks to those integrations, the platform can now more easily monitor Cisco’s RoomOS videoconferencing devices and Meraki MX network appliances. Furthermore, ThousandEyes is receiving an integration with company’s Secure Client application, which workers to securely log into business applications.

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