Page 50 - SAMENA Trends - May-June 2023

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Cisco Unveils Next-Gen Solutions That Empower Security and Productivity

with Generative AI

Cisco (CSCO) announced it is reimagining the way people work
with new, powerful generative AI technology. Cisco will harness
large language models (LLMs) across its Collaboration and Securi-
ty portfolios to help organizations drive productivity and simplicity
for their workforce. Expectations are at an all-time high – organi-
zations are grappling with how to deliver unrivaled experiences for
hybrid workers, while safeguarding their businesses from sophisti-
cated cyber threats. According to Cisco’s 2023 State of Global Inno-
vation Study, IT professionals rank generative AI as the technology
most likely to have a significant impact on their business, with 85%
of those saying they’re prepared for its impact. Cisco recognizes
the important role generative AI will play in advancing the future oftentimes extremely complex but critical function of cybersecuri-
of work and is committed to providing hybrid workers with an effi- ty hygiene. There is little room for error and the process of making
cient, safer, and more productive, work experience. “Generative AI simple edits that won’t interfere with or override previous rules is
will quickly become pervasive as we see businesses and workers extremely time consuming and technically challenging. The vol-
embrace the technology to become materially more productive,” ume, inconsistency, and complexity of maintaining all of these
said Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and General Manager, policies across all of these systems creates a significant risk that
Security and Collaboration, Cisco. “At Cisco, we’ve been using AI opens the door for attacks. The Cisco Security Cloud will leverage
for years. Now we’re unveiling how we’re incorporating generative a generative AI Policy Assistant to address this problem by en-
AI into our existing products, helping customers drive real value abling security and IT administrators to describe granular security
to unlock the most secure, unrivaled work experiences possible.” policies and evaluate how to best implement them across differ-
New Summarization Capabilities in Webex by Cisco With every ent aspects of their security infrastructure. This week's preview
work interaction being hybrid, employees, and customers need showed how the Cisco Policy Assistant can reason with the ex-
collaboration experiences that empower them to do their best isting firewall policy set to implement and simplify rules within the
work. Within the Webex Suite, new summarization capabilities that Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center. It is the first of many
help people get up to speed in seconds will include: examples of how generative AI can reimagine policy management
• “Catch Me Up” will allow users to quickly catch up on missed across the Cisco Security Cloud. Augmenting Analysts with Ma-
interactions, including meetings, calling, chats and more. chine Speed and Scale Threat detection and response is another
• Intelligent meeting summaries with key points and action items. complex and high stakes responsibility of the security operations
Users can opt in to automatically generate the most important where time is of the essence and analysts must rapidly gain under-
elements of a Webex meeting, extract the key points, and standing of complex systems at machine scale. Cisco’s security
capture action items with owners. This will be a huge time-saver operations center (SOC) Assistant will augment security analysts
for attendees and people unable to join a meeting – eliminating with the context to make the right decisions at the right time. The
the need to listen to a recording or read through transcripts. SOC Assistant will provide a comprehensive situation analysis for
• Summaries in Vidcast, the company's video messaging tool. analysts, correlating intel across the Cisco Security Cloud platform
This capability will produce highlights and chapters so viewers solutions, relaying potential impacts, and providing recommend-
can navigate to the most important parts of the video quickly. ed actions. Significantly reducing the time needed for SOC teams
• New conversation summaries in Webex Contact Center will to respond to potential threats. Cisco will preview its generative
provide agents with a fast, automated way to consume long- AI solution for Webex and Security Cloud onstage at Cisco LIVE
form text from digital chats with customers as well as facilitating 2023. Webex summarization, policy management and SOC Assis-
post-call wrap-up and resolution with customers. For example, tant Summaries will be available by the end of calendar year 2023.
if a customer is escalated to a call with a human agent, they The additional SOC Assistant features will be available in the first
expect that agent to be informed and not have to repeat their half of calendar 2024.
frustrations. Chat summaries provides the agent with a clear Cisco’s Approach to Generative AI
summarization of issues and resolutions already explored via For years, Cisco has leveraged AI with audio, video, natural lan-
self-service and a summary of the call to both the agent and guage understanding, and analytics to create unrivaled experienc-
customer once it ends. es for Webex users – with the security Cisco is known for. New
Moving Security from Complex to Conversational enhancements in LLM and generative AI are advancing this even
Cisco is investing in cutting-edge innovations in artificial intelli- further to deliver unrivaled hybrid work experiences. Webex has
gence and machine learning that will augment security staff by established a first set of principles, consisting of multi-modal sup-
simplifying operations and increasing efficacy. Further delivering port, permissions, privacy, and accuracy for its enterprise-grade
on its Security Cloud vision, Cisco is previewing new generative AI. This includes only using data that individuals already have per-
AI capabilities to simplify policy management and improve threat mission to access, based on the privacy and security rules of that
response. Effective security policy creation and management is an specific data source.
50 MAY-JUNE 2023