Networking and cybersecurity company Cisco has, in partnership with cloud services company Amazon Web Services, opened a cybersecurity point of presence (PoP) in South Africa to enable customers in sub-Saharan Africa to access Cisco's cloud-delivered cybersecurity services with high availability and low latency.

The PoP is part of Cisco’s ongoing efforts to enhance service availability and security capabilities in South Africa and the rest of the sub-Saharan Africa region.

“The new PoP for Cisco’s converged cloud security Secure Service Edge (SSE) solution is founded on zero-trust principles. This solution offers our customers seamless, transparent and secure access from any device to any location,” says Cisco Middle East, Africa, Türkiye, Romania and the Commonwealth of Independent States cybersecurity MD Fady Younes.

The PoP consists of multiple redundant data centres for high availability. It is carrier-neutral and offers organisations of all sizes direct access to Cisco's cloud-hosted security services.

Cisco Secure Access automates connectivity decisions for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), private applications and the Internet, thereby reducing complexity and enhancing productivity.

Cisco AI Defense, which is also available through the PoP, is purpose-built for enterprises to develop, deploy and secure AI applications with confidence. The Cisco AI Defense solution is designed to enable and safeguard AI transformation within enterprises.

“[The PoP] is designed to provide a frictionless end-user experience, enhance security with granular controls and simplified IT operations,” he says.

Threats are not only becoming more frequent but also increasingly sophisticated. Cisco recognises the importance of implementing modern cybersecurity measures that significantly reduce risk while meeting the needs of both end-users and IT staff, he adds.

“At a time when cybersecurity is one of the top concerns of every business and public sector leader, our goal is to provide organisations with advanced protection and help them operate more securely in an increasingly digital landscape,” says Cisco South Africa GM Smangele Nkosi.

Cisco's capabilities also aim to secure access to AI applications. As end-users adopt AI apps to improve their productivity, security teams need to prevent data leakage and the poisoning of proprietary data.

Cisco AI Defense provides security teams with a comprehensive view of shadow and sanctioned AI-enabled apps used by employees, and implements policies that restrict employee access to unsanctioned AI tools.

Further, the solution continuously safeguards against threats and confidential data loss while ensuring compliance, says Cisco Europe, Middle East, Africa and Russia cybersecurity technical director Colin McMillan.

The solution also delivers consistent controls and safety guardrails for a multi-model world.

Cisco AI Defense integrates seamlessly with existing data flows for unparalleled visibility and control and is built into the Security Cloud, which is Cisco's unified, AI-driven, cross-domain security platform.

The adoption of AI exposes companies to new risks that traditional cybersecurity solutions do not address. Cisco AI Defense provides full visibility of an enterprise's AI assets and protection against evolving threats, he says.

Specifically, security teams need to discover AI use and understand who is building apps and the training sources they use. AI Defense detects shadow and sanctioned AI applications across public and private clouds, McMillan notes.

The solution also validates AI models. Model tuning can lead to toxic and unexpected outcomes and the solution performs automated testing of AI models for potential safety and security issues. This AI-driven algorithm identifies potential vulnerabilities and recommends guardrails for security teams to use.

Additionally, in terms of runtime security, continuous validation performed by the solution safeguards against potential safety and security threats, such as prompt injection, denial of service and sensitive data leakage on an ongoing basis.

Further, AI Defense is self-optimising, and leverages Cisco’s machine learning models to detect ever-evolving AI safety and security concerns based on threat intelligence data from the Cisco Talos threat intelligence research team, he adds.

OT CYBERSECURITY

Cisco also has significant experience in helping to secure industrial networks and operational technologies (OT), says McMillan.

“We are able to implement policies down to the controller level and the switches built into data processing units. In a hospital environment, this means visibility of the machines used; and we have also secured industrial environments for manufacturing, pharmaceutical, oil and gas and mining companies,” he points out.

In terms of supporting industrial clients, Cisco has validated designs that can help industrial IT managers to see how to control different zones in the OT environment and what the security implications of different designs are.

However, Cisco also relies on specialist industrial technology partners to support industrial companies using its security solutions.

“We started out in networking and worked to secure every point. We use our data lakes (centralised repositories) and telemetry from the network to drive the advanced solutions that we are now delivering in South Africa for sub-Saharan Africa.”

The AI drives common policies across infrastructure elements, traditional security and networking, and secures applications and workloads across multiple clouds and configurations.

“This manages the complexity of large enterprise environments – in which some companies have up to 80 different cybersecurity tools deployed – by integrating the controls and automating policy management into a single framework for security teams,” he says.

Cisco has made a host of acquisitions over the past two years and undertaken internal innovations as part of its AI strategy, notes Younes.

Further, although the company would not disclose the quantum of the investment for the PoP, he emphasises that Cisco only has a handful of these PoPs strategically located across its territories and that it would not have made the investment unless it was sure it could realise a healthy return from public and private clients in sub-Saharan Africa.