Companies need security solutions that protect against AI cybersecurity threats
Over the past few years, the security landscape has rapidly evolved with the introduction of AI, especially generative AI. AI created many new categories of AI cyberthreats, such as data mining, transfer learning attacks, and model inversion. Additional AI-enhanced phishing attacks are causing increased breaches and data loss. Today, companies need specialized security solutions that protect AI systems and their components from various security threats (eg adversarial attacks) and vulnerabilities (eg data poisoning). These security products must protect the data, algorithms, models and infrastructure involved in AI applications.
Securing AI emerges as a key technology initiative in 2025
What Cisco announced
Last week, Cisco unveiled its latest security innovation called Cisco AI Defense. The solution provides a new approach to targeting AI safety and security challenges. Let’s break down Cisco’s announcement, the specific AI features of its latest offering, and the benefits it offers to security operations (SecOps) teams.
Today, every security vendor worth its salt offers new AI-enhanced products with features such as conversational AI assistants and simple alerts to help highlight relevant security threats. The Cisco AI Defense platform builds on Cisco’s existing Secure Access technology and includes new features designed specifically for the AI ecosystem. Specifically, AI Defense aims to address two core AI problems: 1) ensuring enterprise access to AI applications and 2) ensuring the safety and security of AI models and applications built by organizations.
What are the specific AI features of Cisco AI Defense?
Cisco security solutions leverage threat intelligence from over 50 billion daily events and integrate data from tools like Splunk and other third-party sources. Data from these events helps uncover specific AI vulnerabilities and threats. However, the company also added more AI-specific features such as:
- Red Algorithmic Team: In cybersecurity, “red teaming” refers to a process where ethical hackers, acting as potential adversaries, simulate real-world cyberattacks against an organization to identify weaknesses in their security systems. Cisco AI Defense offers red algorithmic fusion to automate stress testing AI models. Unlike traditional red clustering, which relies on human experts, this approach uses AI to simulate billions of possible attack scenarios, uncovering vulnerabilities such as instant injection attacks, information leaks, or unexpected model behaviors. The combination of algorithmic red clustering and real-time threat intelligence enables SecOps teams to identify and address vulnerabilities before they are exploited. Algorithmic Red Squad also supports guardrails in AI Defense for security teams to use.
- Handrail automation. AI safeguards are rules, tools, and policies that ensure AI systems operate within ethical, legal, and technical boundaries. Handrails help prevent AI from being misused, making biased decisions, or causing damage. Cisco AI Defense offers over 200 pre-configured firewalls tailored to specific models and applications. These guardrails comply with industry standards such as OWASP and NIST, covering safety and security measures and ensuring seamless integration into enterprise workflows. By automatically applying guardrails tailored to specific threats or vulnerabilities, the platform allows rapid control of potential issues without disrupting developer workflows or productivity.
- Continuous validation. Model tuning can lead to toxic and unexpected results. Automated testing can check AI models for hundreds of potential safety and security issues. Cisco AI Defense continuously evaluates the AI model to adapt to new threats and changes in model configuration. Continuous validation helps protect against potential security threats, such as injection, denial of service, and leakage of sensitive data on an ongoing basis. This feature ensures that AI applications remain secure even as they evolve through updates or fine-tuning.
Why does Cisco AI Defense matter?
The threat of sensitive corporate data leaking into open enterprise models is real and pervasive. Meanwhile, advanced data theft attacks and poisoning of proprietary corporate information are examples of growing AI security threats. Cisco’s AI Defense provides security teams with visibility, access control, and threat protection.
As companies develop new AI applications, developers need a set of AI safety and security protections that work for each application. Cisco AI Defense helps developers protect AI systems from attacks and protects model behavior across platforms. Security teams need to understand who is building the applications and the training resources for these new applications. Cisco AI Defense provides security teams with visibility into all third-party AI applications used within an organization, including tools for conversational chat, code assistance, and image editing.
During an industry analyst meeting, Cisco Vice President, AI Software and Platform for Security Business Group, DJ Sampath, said, “You need to provide visibility into where these applications are, what models they’re using, and what kind of of data are.. of AI protection for applications is that we’re making sure you have a single place to get all that visibility.”
Cisco AI Defense can implement policies that limit employee access to unsanctioned AI tools. It allows organizations to enforce policies on how AI applications are accessed and used, ensuring compliance with internal and external regulations. It also constantly protects against threats and loss of confidential data while ensuring compliance.
A security product must be able to easily integrate with developer workflows if the solution is to be successful in addressing application-related security issues. Cisco addressed this potential issue by allowing ddevelopers to enable AI model validation processes through APIs, integrating directly into CI/CD pipelines. Automated security checks during development improve security posture without impeding development timelines.
A step forward in AI security
Cisco AI Defense delivers tangible benefits to stressed SecOps teams by providing improved visibility, simplified security management, and proactive threat mitigation. For example, the platform provides detailed insights into AI application usage across the enterprise to improve visibility into AI-powered applications and workflows. Security teams can detect and analyze potential vulnerabilities in real-time by monitoring network traffic and API interactions. With centralized policy enforcement through Cisco Security Cloud Control, SecOps teams can manage security across multiple AI applications and enforcement points from a single interface to reduce complexity and operational overhead.
Cisco AI Defense also simplifies deployment because it seamlessly integrates with the Cisco Secure Access platform, leveraging existing implementation points and simplifying deployment for enterprises already using Cisco security solutions. With the average company using over 76 security products, security teams need simplicity. Cisco AI Defense conforms to established industry standards, making it easier for organizations to meet regulatory requirements and demonstrate compliance during audits.
Cisco’s recent AI Defense announcement shows how the intersection of AI and cybersecurity requires an evolution of a company’s security strategy. By addressing the unique risks posed by AI applications and providing tools tailored to the needs of SecOps teams, Cisco has positioned itself as a contender in the new AI security arena.
