Cisco boosts security wares with AI-driven access control, identity management

Cisco is updating elements of its overarching Security Cloud platform to help enterprise customers better protect widely distributed resources.

The enhancements include a new service called Identity Intelligence that brings together information from the vendor’s existing security products, such as its Duo authentication software and XDR threat detection platform, and adds AI-based behavioral analytics to help strengthen network authentication and protect against identity-based attacks.

Identity Intelligence sits on top of customers’ disparate directories and identity tools to provide visibility into how identities are being actively used and automatically enforce policies. The idea with Identity Intelligence is that, from a single dashboard, enterprise security operators can see their entire network, spot and fix questionable accounts, detect questionable behaviors, and block access where necessary by utilizing existing products, said Raj Chopra, senior vice president and chief product officer of Cisco’s security group. 

Security Intelligence is a pervasive layer that will now permeate through all of Cisco’s portfolio, added Chopra. “Until now, identity and access have been pretty static with regards to what applications or resources users have access to. But that just won’t work anymore – we can now [analyze] behaviors and other network intelligence and automatically determine in real time whether that conduct is deemed too risky for the enterprise to be allowing access.”

According to the Cisco Talos 2023 Year in Review report, compromised credentials were responsible for a quarter of Talos Incident Response engagements.

The ability to control and block access quickly is important, because for enterprise customers, the number of connections – driven by a highly distributed and diverse web of applications, devices, and users – continues to grow exponentially, according to a blog about the news written by Vikas Butaney, senior vice president and general manager, Cisco SD-WAN, multicloud, and industrial IoT , and Joe Vaccaro, vice president of product at Cisco ThousandEyes.