#441: Firewalls just changed forever! (Can your firewall do this?)
Dec 7, 2023
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Cisco has announced an AI Assistant for Firewall Policy and an AI-powered Encrypted Visibility Engine. The podcast discusses the impact of AI in cybersecurity, the benefits of using AI in security solutions, and the evolution of chat interfaces and AI configuration.
Cisco has launched an AI assistant for firewall management, providing step-by-step instructions and troubleshooting for administrators.
Cisco's AI-powered encrypted visibility engine can analyze encrypted traffic without decryption, allowing for the detection and blocking of malicious traffic.
AI will augment human abilities rather than replace them, enhancing user experience and freeing up time for more interesting problems.
Deep dives
Introducing the AI Assistant for Firewall Management
Cisco has announced the launch of an AI assistant for firewall management that aims to simplify and enhance the user experience. The AI assistant understands firewall policies, troubleshoots issues, and provides step-by-step instructions for managing the firewall. It can also correlate insights across different sources of data, augmenting human intelligence with machine intelligence. This assistant is part of Cisco's broader focus on AI in security and is designed to improve the efficacy and economics of firewall management.
AI-Powered Encrypted Visibility Engine for Firewall
Cisco has developed an AI-powered encrypted visibility engine (EVE) that can analyze encrypted traffic without the need for decryption. EVE can identify which applications are sending what type of encrypted traffic, including details such as operating system, browser, and version. This allows for the detection and blocking of malicious encrypted traffic, even on endpoints where encryption cannot be decrypted. By leveraging AI, Cisco is changing the economics of attacks and improving the capabilities of firewall administrators.
AI: Augmenting, Not Replacing, Human Abilities
While there is both fear and hype surrounding AI's impact on jobs, DJ Patil, Cisco's VP of Products for AI, emphasizes that AI will augment human abilities rather than replace them. He believes that AI will enhance the user experience, improve efficacy, and enable users to do more with less. Rather than focusing on the loss of jobs, he encourages individuals to embrace AI as a tool that can free up time and energy to tackle more interesting and creative problems.
Guidance for Studying AI
As AI becomes more accessible through APIs and models, there are different paths to specialize in the field. Those interested in research and development can focus on the core mathematical foundations behind machine learning and deep learning models. AI engineers can explore building applications using available APIs, while AI operations professionals can delve into managing AI deployments and optimizing costs. DJ Patil advises individuals to pick a specialization and ride the wave of AI's evolution.
The Future of Computing and User Experience
DJ Patil predicts that within five years, there will be a significant shift in user experience and human-computer interaction. People will increasingly engage with computing devices using natural language and voice assistants, like Alexa and Siri. The modality of interacting with computers will change, with less reliance on keyboards and more emphasis on conversational interfaces. This shift will lead to a transformed computational landscape and a reimagined user experience.
Firewalls as we know them just changed with major announcements from Cisco.
A very big thank you to Cisco for sponsoring this video.
Cisco have announced both an AI Assistant and EVE (Encrypted Visibility Engine) to scan encrypted traffic.
// Cisco news detail //
AI Assistant for Firewall Policy: The Cisco AI Assistant for Security is first going live within the Cisco Cloud-delivered Firewall Management Center and Cisco Defense Orchestrator to solve the big challenge of setting and maintaining complex policies and firewall rules. Administrators can now use natural language to discover policies and get rule recommendations, eliminating duplicate rules, misconfigured policies, and complex workflows with increased visibility as well as accelerated troubleshooting and configuration tasks.
AI-powered Encrypted Visibility Engine for All Firewall Models: Most datacenter traffic today is encrypted-and the inability to inspect encrypted traffic is a key security concern. Decrypting traffic for inspection is resource-intensive and fraught with operational, privacy, and compliance issues. With the 7.4.1 Operating System now available across the entire Cisco Secure Firewall family, customers see AI go even further via the Encrypted Visibility Engine. The Encrypted Visibility Engine leverages billions of samples, including sandboxed malware samples, to determine if the encrypted traffic is transporting malware. It can tell which operating system the traffic is coming from and what client application is generating that - all without the need for decryption.
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// MENU //
00:00 - Firewalls of the future
01:22 - DJ's Introduction
03:41 - Acquired by Cisco
04:14 - Hype Behind AI
05:49 - Big New Firewall Announcement
10:40 - The What, How and Why of This New Software
14:30 - Can This Be Trusted?
15:15 - Hallucinations
17:13 - New AI Demo
20:15 - Old vs New Way of Interacting with Tech
21:24 - Launch Info
22:18 - The Benefits of an Conversational Interface
25:11 - Training Data
29:00 - Retrieval-Augmented Generations
29:44 - AI-Powered Encrypted Invisibility Engine
33:39 - How Does This Affect Job Security and Opportunity
36:28 - Guidelines for Entering the AI Space
40:58 - Where Will the World be in 5 Years
42:00 - Conclusion and Outro
cisco
cisco firewall
cybersecurity
networking
ai
artificial intelligence
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Disclaimer: This video is for educational purposes only.
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