Recently, Cisco announced its latest in the constant war against cybersecurity threats: its Hypershield. The company explained at a media roundtable that the technology represents a radically new approach to securing data centers and clouds, and has been built in response to the increasing demands the AI revolution has put on IT infrastructure. 

In a nutshell, Cisco Hypershield is intended to protect applications, devices and data across public and private data centers, clouds and physical locations; in fact anywhere customers need it security. Because it has been designed and built with AI in mind from the start, Cisco asserted that Hypershield would enables organizations to achieve security outcomes beyond what has been possible with humans alone.

“Cisco Hypershield is one of the most significant security innovations in our history,” commented Chuck Robbins, Cisco Chair and CEO. “With our data advantage and strength in security, infrastructure and observability platforms, Cisco is uniquely positioned to help our customers harness the power of AI.”

The burning question on our mind was whether the AI infused security solution finally represents a major win for the cybersecurity defenders on the cybersecurity landscape and by extension, businesses working diligently, if not desperately, to secure their data.  

This is especially pertinent, as cybercrime syndicates and cybercriminals have only seemed to have become more prolific and bolder in recent years, using technology to their advantage too to try breach companies and create new malware and threats.It was a question we had the opportunity to ask the panel at the round table. 

"For the past many years, when looking at cybersecurity, our adversary has always had the advantage. This is because they only had to get their attempt right once, whereas cybersecurity defenders have had to get their side of the battle right every single time," explained Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and General Manager for Security and Collaboration at Cisco.

"However, I do think we could in the foreseeable future live in an era where we may have the advantage, due to the technologies such as hardware an acceleration and native AI protection," he continued.

Patel pointed out that impact of a breach is far greater now than it was a decade or two ago.

''This is a technology that is a massive shift in architecture and security. And is not just something that's another product from another vendor, it is a different way of thinking. And that's why we say this is not the next version or something that exists. It's a brand-new reimagined version of something completely new," he stressed.

Jeetu Patel

"'Imagine in your data center, that you could wrap an application in a barrier that understands every function call, every system call, every network packet that's sent out every time it writes to a database every time it writes to a disk. And then that you could stream all of that data to a GPU that will do graph analysis using AI and tell you whether this activity matches a known vulnerability?

And that could ascertain Or does it look anomalous based on how this application has always behaved in the past, and immediately, in real time, feed back to that same virtual layer, something to stop the attack from happening, whether it's a zero day or n days later. That's literally what we're talking about here. It is completely transformational for the way that we secure applications running in the data center," added Craig Connors, the VP and CTO of Security Engineering at Cisco. 

With Hypershield, it seems like Cisco, and thus its customers, how have a formidable ally in its corner. Because it infused with and powered by AI, the solution will keep learning and getting better, evolving, to keep pace with the tricks and traps that cybercriminals create.

Frank Dickson, Group Vice President, Security & Trust at IDC, sounded a bit more cautionary note, pointing out that 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.’’ 

Even so, he was optimistic, noting that with Hypershield, Cisco is addressing ''an AI enabled problem with an AI solution,'' and achnowledged that Cisco Hypershield aims to tip the scales back in favour 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.

Rather than just being a big announcement for the company and the industry - which it was -  Cisco's news left us feeling like it represented a considerable step forward in the constant, never-ending battle to enjoy our digitally connected world more securely and a bit freer from the possibility of getting hacked or breached.