Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven cybersecurity is set to dominate RSA, the world’s largest cybersecurity event, which kicked off yesterday in San Francisco and runs from April 28 to May 1.
Networking giant Cisco set the pace with an announcement that it is deepening its partnership with ServiceNow, a leading AI platform for business transformation. It is claimed that the combination of Cisco’s infrastructure and security platforms and ServiceNow’s AI-driven platform and security solutions will unlock mutual customers’ ability to secure and scale their use of AI while decreasing risk and complexity. The first such integration will bring together Cisco’s AI Defense capabilities with ServiceNow SecOps.
Cisco also announced several new AI-driven security features, including improved threat detection and response capabilities, new AI agents, and integration between Cisco’s AI Defense platform and ServiceNow SecOps. The networking giant has also launched a new group called Foundation AI to focus on advancing AI and security technologies within the company and across the industry. Its first act will be the launch of an open-source AI reasoning model built to enhance security applications.
“Adversaries emboldened by AI”
“The cybersecurity threat landscape has never been more dynamic and complex, with adversaries constantly emboldened and enabled by AI to drive new attacks and exploits,” says Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer, Cisco. “To fight back, understaffed security operations and IT leaders need AI power of their own.”
Search giant Google also introduced several AI agents for security operations at RSA. Customers can find AI agents in preview and full release in the SecOps Labs section of Google Unified Security. Google’s object-based detection feature, called AI Detection, first announced in March, also enters general availability in June. Google is also incorporating Gemini generative AI into its security platform.
But AI still remains very much a double-edged sword. Cybercriminals were quick to see the potential for AI-driven and AI-enhanced cybercrime, and the widespread enthusiasm for rapid AI adoption among organizations across all sectors has also provided a threat across a wide array of new access points for cyberattacks. It remains to be seen if the initiatives currently being announced in San Francisco will be sufficient to counter this growing threat.
