Babacar Wagne, Head of EMEA Cybersecurity Systems Engineering at Cisco, speaking at the Cisco AI for Cybersecurity roundtable. (Photo: Grahamme Kimani)
There was a time when the Internet did not exist and all you had to do was install an antivirus on your computer to protect it from viruses. These are moments we must cherish due to the nature of cybersecurity today.
Technology has evolved since then to the advent of the internet, mobility, the cloud and now, with artificial intelligence (AI). This development presents a real headache for cybersecurity, because as technology evolves, the attack surface expands. Whatever tools you use in your systems, the hacker has access to them too.
To discuss this and seek a solution, Cisco hosted cybersecurity players in Africa for a roundtable breakfast at the Villa Rosa Kempinski hotel in Nairobi. Discussions focused largely on AI for Cybersecurity and Cybersecurity for AI, looking at the tools attackers use and how we can strengthen our defenses to stay safe from attacks.
Babacar Wagne, Head of Cybersecurity Systems Engineering for EMEA at Cisco, was among the speakers at the event and he emphasized how the threat landscape has evolved and continues to evolve.
“We have come to a time where we need to use AI in cybersecurity because we need to drive security innovation, have a seamless way to deliver security and also help fill the skills gap in the field of cybersecurity,” remarked Wagner, adding that Generative AI (GenAI) has had a huge impact on cybersecurity, helping both attackers and defense from an organizational perspective.
Wagner further said that research has shown that cybersecurity organizations are most willing to invest in GenAI in order to accelerate detection.
For his part, Kelvin Mugambi, Cybersecurity Solutions Architect for East and West Africa at Cisco, explained how attackers are using AI to easily target and attack organizations. He also mentioned that attackers work together and defenses must also work together to fortify the fence.
“Attackers are now working together and leveraging AI to improve their chances of a breach. In cybersecurity, the attacker must succeed once, while the defense must succeed at all times. It is time to put the defenses together to ensure effective cybersecurity,” Mugambi said during his roundtable presentation.
He added that security should be integrated as organizations work on a project and not an afterthought. Safety must be built into the project and be part of it throughout the journey.
“From a user perspective, they should be able to use applications provided by an organization without having to worry about the cybersecurity mechanism used by the organization,” Mugambi said.
At the event, Cisco also spoke about its cybersecurity strategy that leverages AI and the cloud. The strategy is based on three pillars which are “assistance”, “augmentation” and “automation”.
Using Cisco AI Assistant, the company seeks to facilitate how organizations can interact with the security solutions they use. In Augmentation, the goal is to correlate information to machine speed and create an ROI of 10 times human effort. Finally in Automation, the objective is to automate complex workflows and reduce response time.
