Cisco Hypershield for Federal Government
The world of Information Technology has changed rapidly and continues to evolve every day. Users are everywhere, devices are everywhere, and applications are now everywhere – the main problem here; Security isn’t everywhere. At least not yet. In an effort to minimize this IT issue Cisco will be launching Hypershield in August of 2024. So what is Cisco Hypershield? As a Value Added Reseller of IT Solutions to the Federal Government, Mvation is always researching the latest technologies. Once we watched the Cisco Keynote regarding Hypershield; we started our research, and brought all of our findings here, for you. So let’s go!
What is Cisco Hypershield?
Cisco Hypershield is a groundbreaking security architecture designed to defend modern, AI-scale data centers. This technology is being called “Groundbreaking” in an industry that is ever changing. Let’s dive in.
The idea behind Cisco Hypershield is AI-Native Security everywhere. Cisco Hypershield brings the power of hyperscaler technology to the enterprise, reimagining security for data centers and cloud environments in the era of AI. Here’s what you need to know:
- AI-Native Design – Cisco Hypershield is designed from the ground up with AI. It delivers high efficacy, faster response, and continuous protection.
- The system earns your trust by striking the right balance between autonomy and control.
- It protects everywhere – from the network to workloads – ensuring end-to-end security.
2. Close the Exploit Gap:
- In just minutes (versus months), the AI-native rule engine prioritizes vulnerabilities and deploys surgical compensating controls.
- These controls are tested against live production, traffic, ensuring optimal placement.
3. Segmentation that Works:
- Hypershield creates an extended network that continuously adapts to current realities.
- It considers process behaviors, file changes, and learned policy preferences to place macro-guardrails.
- These guardrails tighten down to regex filters, ensuring effective segmentation.
4. Self-Qualifying Updates:
- Validate upgrades and policy changes against live production traffic using the innovative dual dataplane approach.
- This approach ensures that updates won’t disrupt operations.
5. Fabric that Grows Over Time
- Hypershield’s architecture seamlessly incorporates new enforcement points without overhauling policy.
- As your infrastructure evolves, Hypershield adapts.
Benefits of Cisco Hypershield for Federal Government
Cisco Hypershield offers several key features and benefits tailored to the needs of the federal government. Including (but not limited to) Distributed security architecture, AI-Driven threat analysis and prioritization, extending security beyond data centers, self-healing and proactive upgrades, and adaptability and scalability. Let’s dive a bit more into each area.
Distributed Security Architecture:
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- Hypershield is designed to be distributed across the entire environment, embedding security in every software component. It covers servers, applications, and both public and private cloud deployments.
- By adopting a hyperscale model inspired by major cloud providers, Hypershield ensures comprehensive protection.
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- AI-Driven Threat Analysis and Prioritization:
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- Hypershield’s AI engine continuously analyzes threats and assigns risk scores. This prioritizes vulnerabilities, allowing security teams to focus on critical issues.
- Efficient resource allocation and effective incident response are facilitated by this automated threat analysis.
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- Extending Security Beyond Data Centers:
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- Hypershield isn’t limited to traditional data centers. It secures diverse environments, including medical devices in hospitals and technology on factory floors.
- Federal agencies benefit from this flexibility, ensuring protection across various scenarios.
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- Self-Healing and Proactive Upgrades:
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- Hypershield’s self-qualifying upgrades keep security components up-to-date without manual intervention.
- The AI engine monitors anomalies and initiates necessary updates or patches, reducing vulnerabilities.
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- Adaptability and Scalability:
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- Hypershield adapts to changing environments, making it suitable for federal agencies with dynamic needs.
- Its scalability ensures seamless expansion without compromising security.
Cisco Hypershield has Significant Implications for Federal Cybersecurity Roadmaps
Let’s explore some key insights:
- Scalability and Efficiency:
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- By resolving the inherent weaknesses of traditional security models, Hypershield promises a scalable, efficient, and secure framework. Federal agencies can benefit from enhanced security measures that protect network perimeters, internal data, and critical systems1.
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- Adaptation to Evolving Threats:
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- As the threat landscape evolves, federal agencies need adaptable solutions. Hypershield’s distributed, AI-native approach ensures that security can be embedded wherever it’s needed. This flexibility allows agencies to stay ahead of emerging threats and respond effectively2.
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- Holistic Security Fabric:
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- Hypershield goes beyond traditional perimeter-based security. It acts as a fabric that blankets the entire environment, securing every software component, server, and cloud deployment. For federal agencies dealing with diverse and dynamic ecosystems, this holistic approach is crucial2.
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- Integration with Existing Infrastructure:
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- Federal agencies can integrate Hypershield seamlessly into their existing infrastructure. Whether it’s VMs, Kubernetes clusters, or networking devices, Hypershield’s AI-native capabilities enhance protection without disrupting operations2.
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- Future-Proofing and Extensibility:
- Hypershield’s roadmap includes extensions beyond data centers. Soon, it will secure medical devices in hospitals and operational technology on factory floors. Federal agencies should consider how Hypershield aligns with their long-term security strategies2.
What the Federal Government Needs to Know About Cisco Hypershield
- Cisco Hypershield is planned to be launched in August 2024.
- As of May 2024 Hypershield is not FedRAMP certified. However, Cisco has seen extremely positive feedback from the US Federal Government. So we’ll be keeping a close eye on this technology.
- Cisco Hypershield can co-exist across ports, workloads, IoT/OT, containers, etc. In fact, they can be co-resident.
- Cisco Hypershield works with Cisco Secure Firewall. They serve different but complementary security roles. While Hypershield is designed for securing internal, east-west traffic between services and workloads in data centers and clouds, it also provides in-depth control within the workload itself, including process execution and vulnerability management. On the other hand, Secure Firewall is better suited for perimeter defense or north-south traffic control at branches, data center edges, and cloud boundaries, offering features like decryption, user identity verification, and intrusion detection and prevention – capabilities that are not present in Hypershield. The complementary nature of Secure Firewall and Hypershield comes together at the Cisco Security Cloud unified management layer, Cisco Defense Orchestrator (CDO). Using CDO, the operator can share common context like application definitions and intelligence to have consistent policy be available across both Secure Firewall and Hypershield.
Cisco Hypershield in the Press
Cisco Hypershield has garnered attention and praise from analysts within the IT industry. Here are some insights around this innovative security solution:
- Tom Gillis, in a blog post, introduced Cisco Hypershield as the “first truly distributed, AI-native system” that brings the security advantages of a hyperscale model to enterprises. Inspired by the hyperscale model pioneered by big public cloud providers like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, Hypershield embeds security in every software component of applications running on your network, on every server, and in public or private cloud deployments1.
- IDC’s Dickson lauded Hypershield as a “fantastic” approach to solving today’s security challenges. However, he also emphasized that the threat landscape constantly evolves, and new security technologies will be needed in the future3.
- Ventureburn highlighted Hypershield’s ability to shield vulnerabilities almost instantly, which is crucial in combating increasingly clever malicious cyber adversaries. The audacious scope of Cisco’s vision aligns well with the demands of AI-era security4.
- Cisco executives described Hypershield as a cloud-native, AI-powered approach to highly distributed security for AI-scale data centers. It’s built into the fabric of the network and represents a radical departure from traditional security approaches5.
In summary, analysts recognize Cisco Hypershield as a significant innovation that addresses the security challenges posed by AI-scale data centers and distributed environments. While it’s a major step forward, the ever-evolving threat landscape will continue to drive the need for further advancements in security technology2. If you’d like more details, feel free to explore the provided references! 😊 Interested in learning about the latest technologies for Command Centers?
For more information about Mvation’s AV solutions for the federal government, visit Mvation’s website.
Sources:
- Leveraging Hypershield
- Cisco Hypershield; A new era of Distributed, AI-Native Security
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Cisco brings CI/CD security to embedded infrastructure with HyperShield
- Cisco ramps up AI era security with Hypershield
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Cisco Hypershield: Security reimagined — hyper-distributed security for the AI-scale data center