Cisco Techniques Inc. stated Monday it’s finalizing the acquisition of a synthetic intelligence-focused safety startup referred to as Strong Intelligence Inc. for an undisclosed value.
Strong Intelligence has created a platform that’s designed to guard AI fashions and the information they feed on all through all the development-to-production lifecycle. The corporate first obtained the eye of Cisco a few years in the past, when the networking big invested in it by means of its Cisco Investments arm.
The startup’s experience by way of AI mannequin safety and governance is complementary to Cisco’s personal safety choices, Tom Gillis, senior vice chairman and common supervisor of Cisco’s safety enterprise, wrote in a weblog put up.
“The mix of Cisco and Strong Intelligence implies that we will ship superior AI safety processing seamlessly into the present knowledge flows, by inserting it into Cisco safety and networking merchandise,” he promised. Cisco believes that this integration will end in superior visibility by way of AI visitors, so its prospects will have the ability to construct and deploy AI functions in a safer manner, Gillis added.
As well as, Cisco believes Strong Intelligence’s instruments can help in risk safety for AI functions and fashions. The corporate stated it should assist to mitigate dangers equivalent to immediate injection assaults, which refers to incidents when malicious customers attempt to immediate AI fashions to behave badly. It may possibly additionally assist to safeguard towards knowledge poisoning, jailbreaking and unintentional mannequin outcomes, Gillis stated. Different advantages for customers embody simplified configuration and consumer experiences, assault prediction and adaptive coverage enforcement.
The corporate stated it plans to deliver Strong Intelligence’s automated mannequin evaluation and danger mitigation capabilities throughout the umbrella of Cisco Safety Cloud, so prospects will have the ability to safe their community, AI functions, fashions and customers in the identical place.
Gillis stated prospects are more and more prioritizing info expertise modernization and cybersecurity to safeguard their AI investments. He cites Cisco’s 2024 AI Readiness Index as proof of that declare. That examine discovered that 95% of enterprises assume AI will “considerably affect IT infrastructure and safety.”
In consequence, enterprises would require extra strong safety measures, Gillis stated. “As organizations more and more depend on AI functions for innovation and effectivity, safeguarding these functions and their underlying fashions turns into essential,” Gillis wrote. “Conventional safety instruments typically fall quick in addressing the distinctive challenges posed by AI, making a urgent want for specialised options.”
The acquisition of Strong Intelligence accelerates Cisco’s pivot into the safety enterprise, as a part of an ongoing effort to diversify its income stream and convey in additional recurring gross sales. The corporate, as soon as the world’s Most worthy, has struggled lately with declining income from its core networking {hardware} enterprise, which is concentrated on promoting issues like Ethernet switches and routers for knowledge facilities. Its prospects are steadily migrating workloads to the general public cloud, so that they’re investing much less in their very own {hardware}.
Cisco has responded by focusing extra on networking safety, notably paying $28 billion to amass the cybersecurity and observability agency Splunk Inc. In the meantime, the AI growth has given it a way of higher urgency, as enterprises are nonetheless struggling to return to grips with learn how to shield their AI investments.
To capitalize on this chance, Cisco earlier this 12 months introduced a $1 billion fund to put money into AI startups, and has already made vital bets on AI mannequin makers equivalent to Cohere Inc., Mistral and Scale AI Inc.
Picture: SiliconANGLE/Microsoft Designer
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