Cisco is rearchitecting new ways to harness and protect AI and other modern workloads with Cisco Hypershield.
In response to the increasing demands of the AI revolution on IT infrastructure, Cisco has unveiled a new approach to securing data centers and clouds. Cisco is rearchitecting how to harness and protect AI and other modern workloads with Cisco Hypershield. This innovation empowers defenders to build on recent announcements to accelerate AI infrastructure with Cisco’s Ethernet switching, silicon, and compute portfolio.
Cisco Hypershield
Hypershield operates on the premise of ubiquity, offering a security solution that extends beyond the traditional confines of data centers to encompass public and private clouds and any physical location where security is required. Its architecture is inherently AI-driven, enabling organizations to surpass previous security limitations and offering unprecedented defense automation.
Cisco’s leadership highlights its role as a landmark in the company’s security innovation lineage. With Cisco’s established data, security, and infrastructure expertise, Hypershield is poised to amplify AI’s potential in securing digital assets.
The architecture of Hypershield departs from conventional security models. It leverages hyperscale cloud technology and adapts it for businesses of varying sizes. Hypershield stands out as a security net that encapsulates every aspect of an IT environment, from individual applications in data centers to Kubernetes clusters and containers in the cloud, extending to every network port.
The strategic vision shared by Cisco executives encapsulates the future role of data centers in the digital age. Hypershield is positioned as a versatile security tool that can be deployed across various platforms. The goal is to achieve a distributed system of security enforcement points that simplify management and enhance autonomy while being cost-effective.
The three-dimensional enforcement of Hypershield involves layers of software, virtual machines, and network and compute servers, all powered by advanced hardware accelerators. These layers are vital in delivering the performance necessary for modern computing and cloud services.
Hypershield’s foundations rest on three pivotal concepts:
- AI-Native: Hypershield was crafted with an autonomous and predictive core, capable of self-management upon earning trust, facilitating scalable security measures across a vast network.
- Cloud-Native: The system is built upon open-source eBPF technology, which has become the standard for connecting and securing cloud-native workloads, bolstered by Cisco’s Cisco’s acquisition of Isovalent.
- Hyper-Distributed: Cisco’s vision transforms traditional network security by incorporating advanced security controls directly into the server and network fabric. This enables Hypershield to span all clouds and utilize hardware accelerations like DPUs for real-time analysis and response to anomalies.
NVIDIA Adds Efficiency and Resilience
NVIDIA’s collaboration with Cisco enhances Hypershield, integrating AI-powered cybersecurity and microservices to deliver comprehensive security from cloud to edge. NVIDIA’s accelerators combine GPU and DPU capabilities to bolster Hypershield’s efficiency and resilience.
The partnership is a testament to the shared commitment to providing top-tier, AI-enhanced security infrastructure capable of addressing the growing and evolving cybersecurity threats faced by businesses across various industries.
In its search to address sophisticated cybersecurity challenges, Hypershield focuses on:
- Distributed Exploit Protection: Hypershield is engineered to counteract attackers’ swift weaponization of vulnerabilities. It achieves rapid deployment of protective measures within its extensive enforcement network, as informed by Cisco Talos Threat Intelligence.
- Autonomous Segmentation: Hypershield utilizes continuous observation and autonomous reasoning to perpetually refine and enforce segmentation policies to combat lateral movements by attackers within a network.
- Self-qualifying Upgrades: The platform streamlines the deployment of updates by employing a unique software architecture that validates upgrades through a “digital twin” environment, thus ensuring seamless policy implementation without downtime.
Hypershield, an integral component of the Cisco Security Cloud, is slated for general availability in August. The recent acquisition of Splunk by Cisco is set to augment Hypershield with enhanced visibility and insights, promising a new benchmark in digital security protection.
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