The AI Revolution: Transforming Technology and Reshaping Cybersecurity

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing government and technology, driving an urgent need for innovation across all operations. Although historically, local and state government systems have seen only incremental changes with limited AI adoption, today, a significant shift is occurring as AI is integrated across all government sectors.

Benefits of AI Integration

The benefits of these changes are evident. AI-powered systems analyze vast amounts of data, offering insights for better decision-making. Public services become more personalized and efficient, reducing wait times and enhancing citizen satisfaction. Security is significantly bolstered through AI-driven threat detection and response. Consequently, governments are adopting AI and advanced software applications to provide secure, reliable, and resilient services to their citizens, enhancing digital engagement and communication within their communities.

With this rapid growth, cybersecurity operations are among the areas most significantly impacted by advancements in artificial intelligence. CyberOps is at a unique intersection, needing to leverage advanced AI capabilities to enhance effectiveness and resiliency. However, numerous applications and connections are simultaneously challenging it by utilizing emerging AI capabilities to improve their effectiveness and resilience. Despite historically being rigid and resistant to change, CyberOps must adapt to the challenges of an AI-driven digital world.

Whole-of-State / Agency Cybersecurity Approach

Whole-of-State cybersecurity and zero trust governments can be challenged with maintaining digital operations while ensuring sensitive information’s privacy and security. Cisco’s technology allowed agencies to easily meet these requirements through advanced AI-powered security solutions and privacy-preserving AI models. Thanks to techniques like federated learning and differential privacy, sensitive information could be processed and analyzed without compromising individual privacy.

Adopting AI-Driven Services

Adopting AI-driven, easily consumable, on-demand services provides a secure, sustainable, and reliable foundation to build on. Investing in an infrastructure that is secure and flexible allows governments to quickly pivot to the emerging opportunities that the AI revolution brings. No one person could have predicted or prepared for such a transformative shift. Still, the ability to rapidly adapt to the challenges it brought and continue to serve the community and citizens in the ways they deserve is key.

Challenges and Adaptation

Don’t be mistaken, change is often hard. Humans are creatures of habit and comfort and rarely like to be pushed outside our comfort zone. Unfortunately, the AI revolution is doing just that. It is forcing us to adapt and discover new ways to operate and provide what are now seen as even the most basic digital services. The drive and demand for AI-powered services in the government sector are rapidly expanding. We are experiencing one of the most significant catalysts for technological adoption in the state and local government space since the internet became mainstream.

This revolution is driving the necessity for a whole-of-state cybersecurity and zero trust approach. The goal is no longer maintaining the status quo but rather achieving a level of service that provides the foundation for how things can be in an AI-enabled world. Providing enhanced, secure services and support to the community has become the resounding focus of state and local governments.

Cisco’s Role in Supporting Governments

As we navigate this AI revolution, Cisco stands ready to support governments in their journey towards whole-of-state cybersecurity and zero trust adoption. Our comprehensive suite of AI-powered solutions provides the building blocks for a secure and efficient AI-enabled government infrastructure. The shift to a more inclusive, AI-driven government began with specific applications but is rapidly expanding to all sectors and offerings in the state and local government spaces.

Source: cisco.com

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Cisco Enhances Zero Trust Access with Google

Cisco Secure Access provides a broad set of security functions in one unified solution to make both users and the IT team more productive, but no single solution can cover all security requirements. With this perspective Secure Access is actively building a strong technology ecosystem to more efficiently serve the wider needs in the market. This week Cisco announced an additional collaboration with Google to bring browser-based threat and data protection from Chrome Enterprise to web apps secured by Cisco Secure Access. As more work activities happen on web applications, a secure enterprise browser can strengthen and simplify endpoint security as part of a broader zero trust approach.

Combined, Google’s Chrome Enterprise and Cisco’s Security Cloud can help customers protect against, detect, and remediate a broad range of cyber-attacks by combining browser- and cloud-based protection. Organizations can more easily mitigate security risks while increasing user productivity (including employees, partners, and contractors), and reducing administrative tasks.

As a critical component of a comprehensive security strategy, Cisco Secure Access, an AI-first Security Service Edge (SSE) solution built on Cisco Security Cloud, provides a converged set of cloud security services. These include Zero Trust Access for private applications, Secure Web Gateway for the web, Cloud Access Security Broker for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Browser Isolation for web-based threats, Digital Experience Monitoring to optimize user productivity, Domain Name System security, and more. Chrome Enterprise offers browser-based threat and data protection, policy and access controls and critical security insights.

The combination of Cisco Secure Access and Chrome Enterprise offers enterprises the benefits of both cloud-based and browser-based security. Users are protected across multiple device types, applications, and networks with end-to-end zero trust access, including device trust, strong authorization, and secure application access for both managed and unmanaged devices. Cisco and Google are collaborating to deliver:

Advanced, granular, zero trust security 

The solution protects users, data, and apps through streamlined zero trust access to enterprise applications from managed and unmanaged devices with granular controls.

In addition, independent user-to-app traffic streams and hidden app locations provide unmatched protection against reconnaissance, active threats, and lateral movement. Lastly, an efficient combination of browser and cloud-based DLP controls secure sensitive data and protect against inappropriate copying, pasting, and printing. This includes blocking content transfers to and from GenAI sites when they violate DLP policies.

Frictionless user experience

A good user experience is critical to preventing user subversion of security controls. This solution significantly simplifies the user experience by removing the need for the manual, multi-step, agent and VPN connection process, significantly simplifying the user experience. It provides a one-step, fast connection to private applications through Chrome Enterprise, making it easier for users to access work resources. Users’ devices go through an automated and seamless trust process instantly at login, which ensures they have a strong security posture.

Simplified management

Simplifying the administrative experience is another focus of this collaboration. It starts with an easier deployment process that is enabled by agentless activation of device trust capabilities. Setting access policies for Chrome through Cisco Secure Access centralizes administrative tasks and allows for more consistent policy enforcement across applications. To improve detection times, we allow for security events from Chrome to be collected, analyzed, and extracted, including password changes, unapproved password reuse, data exfiltration, unsafe site visits, extension events and malware transfer events.

Source: cisco.com

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