Cisco unveils 'Identity Intelligence' to strengthen cloud security with AI and networking integration

Cisco Systems Inc. today announced new advances in the Cisco Security Cloud that simplify security and protect against identity-based attacks with artificial intelligence.

First up is Cisco Identity Intelligence. This is a new solution that Cisco claims is the industry's first to combine identity, networking, and security. The company says this combination will better protect organizations' complex identity stacks from increasingly sophisticated attacker techniques.

Cisco claims that blind trust currently exists between authentication and access solutions, which is why threat actors are targeting these weaknesses to successfully compromise large organizations in 2023. I am. Last year, more than 26% of all Cisco Talos incident response efforts involved an adversary using compromised credentials from a valid account.

The problem Cisco has identified is that users are often mapped to many digital identities and accounts, significantly increasing the number of points of entry for attackers and increasing the potential for lateral movement between identities. In many cases, legacy permissions have not been removed, and security teams need to know the important information about his past identity behavior, system-wide actions, and current risk level needed to make reliable access decisions. You're missing the context.

This is where the new Cisco Identity Intelligence solution comes into play. The solution runs on top of a customer's existing identity store, providing unified visibility and AI-driven analytics.

This solution allows customers to discover their entire identity population, clean up vulnerable accounts, remove unused and dangerous privileges, detect behavioral anomalies, and detect high-risk access attempts can be blocked.

Identity Intelligence is built on an identity graph that pulls data from existing third-party sources that manage identity and access. Using AI-driven behavioral analytics to access the network, organizations can leverage the Cisco Identity Services Engine to choose staged responses such as isolating identities, terminating active sessions, and isolating networks.

The solution provides key insights from existing solutions, such as smart authentication with Cisco Duo, which detects anomalous patterns based on behavior and third-party signals. Smart Access with Cisco Secure Access is used to validate authentication decisions and block anomalous or risky behavior. Smart Threat Detection with Cisco XDR also correlates ID signals to provide missing information missed by traditional endpoint and network security solutions.

“Organizations need to adopt an identity-first approach to security, which moves from simply asking whether a user has access to a system to determining whether a user 'should' be able to do what they do.” You can evolve to continuously evaluate whether or not. Once it's authenticated, we'll run it,'' said Jeetu Patel, Cisco executive vice president and general manager of security and collaboration. “By analyzing the entire attack surface of an organization's users, machines, services, apps, data, and their behavior, Cisco Identity Intelligence bridges the gap between authentication and access.”

artificial intelligence

Along with the announcement of Cisco Identity Intelligence, Cisco also announced enhancements to the AI ​​capabilities of Cisco AI Assistant for Cloud. The service, announced in December, is designed to strengthen cybersecurity posture by providing advanced data analysis, policy recommendations, and automated task management.

Expanded capabilities include AI Assistant in Secure Access, a new tool that uses generative AI to enable customers to create security access policies using natural language prompts. This assistant, integrated into Cisco's Secure Services Edge solution, provides a more intuitive interface for policy creation.

New features in Secure Access now automatically detect and protect intellectual property entering and exiting AI systems. In addition, Cisco Email Threat Defense uses AI to simultaneously evaluate different parts of incoming emails for markers of malicious intent.

Finally, Cisco announced that it will integrate robust networking features with Cisco Secure Access. Experience Insights, powered by Cisco's ThousandEyes, improves productivity for hybrid workers by quickly uncovering connectivity and application issues and facilitating faster resolution. This feature is included with all Secure Access licenses and is available at no additional charge.

Image: DALL-E 3