L’artificial intelligence it is unfortunately not only used for benevolent purposes: it has also become a powerful tool that allows cybercriminals to carry out reverse engineering security updates and create working exploit codes in record time. Cisco tries to solve an AI-generated problem with an AI solution: the solution Hypershieldjust presented, protects systems from new vulnerabilities, even unknown ones, even when they are not yet available patch officials.
Cisco Hypershield reflects the innovative vision of the company which intends to propose a revolutionary tool, capable of redefining the very concept of security, integrating perfectly, fromendpoint at the net.
What is the winning idea behind Cisco Hypershield
The panorama of IT security it is constantly evolving and companies are not ready to face modern threats using traditional tools. This data emerged clearly with the publication of the most recent Cisco Cybersecurity Readiness Index.
To deal with the most advanced cyber attacks, it is increasingly indispensable reduce complexity of the security solutions used in the company and, rather, focus on integrated products capable of providing a reliable response at platform level.
Cisco Hypershield has the advantage of introducing the use of artificial intelligence to detect early and neutralize every possible threat, including attacks designed to target a specific professional or company. It enables you to achieve security results that cannot be achieved with human intervention alone by applying a security-focused strategy wherever it is needed: including within data centers, Kubernetes clusters residing in public clouds, as well as in any container or virtual machine.
The solution just unveiled by Cisco is also capable of transform every network port at a high-performance safety application point. Hypershield thus enables completely new protection features in the cloud, in data centers, in the production departments of any type of company. It can also block exploits in a few minutes and manage the consequences resulting from an attack.
Enable security features where necessary
A platform like Cisco Hypershield was created for i data center but it is an extremely scalable solution. So much so that the US multinational has decided to offer it to IT teams of any size and sector.
As Jeetu Patel explained, EVP and GM for Security and Collaboration at Cisco,”the power of Hypershield lies in the possibility of insert security wherever it is needed: in software, in a server or, in the future, even in a network switch. (…) Companies must have security solutions capable of managing increasingly diverse and numerous situations at a lower cost“.
Enforcing security with Hypershield occurs at three different levels: in software, in virtual machines, in servers, and in appliance network, exploiting the same powerful people hardware accelerators used extensively in high-performance computing and hyperscale public clouds.
The three fundamental pillars of Hypershield
The functioning of Hypershield is based on three fundamental pillars. To begin with, the solution is AI-Native that is, built and designed from the beginning to be autonomous and predictive. Hypershield manages itself once the desired level of security is achieved, making a hyper-distributed approach possible.
Hypershield, moreover, is Cloud-native: Built on open source eBPF, the default mechanism for connecting and protecting cloud workloads. Cisco expects to close the acquisition this month Isovalentthe leading provider of eBPF solutions for businesses.
eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter) is a technology that allows you to run custom code within the Linux kernel safely and efficiently. Originally designed to filter and analyze network traffic, eBPF has evolved into an extensible platform that allows developers to write small programs that run directly in the Linux kernel, enabling a wide range of features, such as performance monitoring, security , networking and more.
Cisco is completely reimagining how traditional network security works by embedding advanced security controls into the servers and network. Hypershield spans across clouds and leverages hardware acceleration to analyze and respond to anomalies in application and network behavior. Security is thus moved closer to the workloads that need to be protected. For these reasons, Hypershield is said to be Hyper-Distributed.
The challenges that Hypershield helps solve in any company
The new and revolutionary security platform just presented by Cisco helps solve three fundamental challenges in the security segment.
First of all, Cisco Hypershield protects against exploits. The latter are particular codes or sequences of instructions designed to exploit vulnerabilities present in computer systems or software in order to obtain unauthorized access, perform arbitrary operations or damage the systems.
Cybercriminals are skilled at exploit vulnerabilities faster than companies can design and develop fix patches. Hypershield offers effective protection in minutes, acting as an effective bulwark of safety even in the most potentially dangerous situations.
Autonomous segmentation and self-qualifying updates
Once a cybercriminal manages to break into the company network, the segmentation it is essential to be able to stop it. Hypershield continuously observes and evaluates the policy existing to autonomously segment the network, solving the problem of managing complex IT environments.
Hypershield also takes care of automating and simplifying the verification process distribution of updates once ready, using a dual data plan. This completely new software architecture allows you to apply software updates and security policy changes using a system that acts as a digital twin.
The concept of digital twin (digital twin) in the context of cybersecurity refers to the creation and use of a digital replica of a computer system, network or device in order to analyze and monitor the behavior and security of that system in real time.
The Cisco solution verifies the effectiveness and stability of the updates and then applies patches to systems in production, without negatively impacting the availability of the endpoints and without blocking ongoing activities.