Cisco snaps up AI mannequin and knowledge safety startup Strong Intelligence

Cisco Methods 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 info they feed on all through your complete development-to-production lifecycle. The corporate first bought the eye of Cisco a few years in the past, when the networking large invested in it by 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 basic supervisor of Cisco’s safety enterprise, wrote in a weblog publish.

“The mix of Cisco and Strong Intelligence signifies 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 lead to superior visibility by way of AI visitors, so its prospects will be capable to construct and deploy AI functions in a safer manner, Gillis added.

As well as, Cisco believes Strong Intelligence’s instruments can support in menace safety for AI functions and fashions. The corporate stated it’s going to assist to mitigate dangers similar 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 embrace simplified configuration and person experiences, assault prediction and adaptive coverage enforcement.

The corporate stated it plans to deliver Strong Intelligence’s automated mannequin evaluation and danger mitigation capabilities inside the umbrella of Cisco Safety Cloud, so prospects will be capable 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 research discovered that 95% of enterprises assume AI will “considerably influence IT infrastructure and safety.”

Because of this, enterprises would require extra sturdy 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 crucial,” 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 precious, 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, in order 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 accumulate the cybersecurity and observability agency Splunk Inc. In the meantime, the AI increase has given it a way of better urgency, as enterprises are nonetheless struggling to come back to grips with find out how to defend their AI investments.

To capitalize on this chance, Cisco earlier this yr introduced a $1 billion fund to put money into AI startups, and has already made important bets on AI mannequin makers similar to Cohere Inc., Mistral and Scale AI Inc.

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