Security News > 2023 > December > Cisco intros AI to find firewall flaws, warns this sort of thing can't be free

Cisco's executive veep for security Jeetu Patel has predicted that AI will change the infosec landscape, but that end users will eventually pay for the privilege of having a binary brainbox by their side when they go into battle.

Speaking at the Asia Pacific incarnation of the Cisco Live event today, in Melbourne, Australia, Patel offered the infosec maxim that attackers only need to get it right once, but defenders need to get it right every time.

Cisco wants to tame that mess by ingesting alerts from multiple products, and applying AI to understand how seemingly unrelated mid-level alerts that might each be ignored together represent a severe threat worthy of investigation.

Cisco's first lash at this stuff is an AI Assistant for Firewall Policy that assesses firewall rules and, using a natural language interface, allows admins to identify policies that could usefully be tweaked or removed.

Cisco has also used AI to identify traces of malware activity in encrypted traffic.

Cisco hasn't announced prices yet, because it doesn't have a sufficient sample of user behaviour to understand usage patterns that will let it understand the costs of such services.

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