Working in the security space I’ve seen first-hand how the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the threat landscape. Every day, employees are turning to third-party AI tools to work faster and smarter, while enterprises push to build their own AI-powered applications. However, with this comes a new wave of risks – ones that traditional security solutions were never designed to handle.
Sensitive data leakage, adversarial attacks, and prompt injection vulnerabilities aren’t just theoretical anymore – they’re real challenges we need to manage today.
There have been multiple high-profile incidents where AI tools, especially large language models (LLMs) or generative AI systems, inadvertently exposed sensitive or proprietary information, such as with Samsung in 2023.
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That’s where Cisco AI Defense comes in. It’s specifically designed to protect against the threats that AI usage itself introduces. Built to integrate tightly with existing Cisco security solutions, it provides visibility and protection across two critical fronts: how your employees are accessing third-party AI tools, and how your organisation is developing and deploying AI applications.
The need for a solution like Cisco AI Defense has never been greater. We’re moving toward a future where the workforce will be made up of humans working alongside AI agents and applications. This evolution offers incredible opportunities for productivity gains, but it also introduces significant security challenges. Enterprises must not sacrifice AI safety for the sake of speed. They need a common layer of visibility and control across their entire AI environment, which is exactly what Cisco AI Defense delivers.
One of the most immediate risks enterprises face today is “Shadow AI”- a term used to describe the growing use of AI-powered applications like ChatGPT by employees, often without the knowledge, approval or clear usage guidelines from security teams. While these tools offer productivity benefits, they also introduce serious risks. Prompts and responses might expose sensitive company data, and users may unknowingly upload and download content that contains proprietary or dangerous information.
In September 2023, Google Bard experienced a privacy breach when private chatbot conversations began appearing in Google Search results.
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I recently heard about a case where an employee used ChatGPT to help draft their company’s strategic plan. They didn’t think twice about entering sensitive details into the platform. The worrying part? With the right AI tools, a competitor could potentially retrieve fragments of that information — giving them insight into the company’s direction.
This is where Cisco AI Defense makes a real impact. With its AI Access capabilities, organisations can discover and monitor AI usage while applying contextual, universal access controls and guardrails. These policies protect against sensitive data being loaded to chat tools, threats hidden within AI responses, and the misuse of AI-generated outputs. Rather than blocking AI access altogether—a blunt approach that stifles innovation—Cisco AI Defense enables safe and secure AI use, aligning security and productivity goals.
Additionally, by leveraging the network as the control point, Cisco AI Defense can be integrated with Cisco Secure Access and the broader security infrastructure managed through Cisco Security Cloud Control. This provides visibility into more than 750 third-party AI applications, identifying which applications are being used, assessing their risk profiles, and enforcing unified security policies across the network.
Beyond employee usage, another critical risk area is the development of AI applications within the enterprise. As businesses build AI models and integrate them into customer service platforms, internal tools, or external-facing products, they create a new attack surface. AI models can leak proprietary information, be manipulated through prompt injections, or produce toxic and unsafe outputs, creating reputational, legal, and financial risks.
Cisco AI Defense takes a full lifecycle approach to securing AI development. It embeds network traffic interceptors that monitor communication between applications and AI models, providing continuous oversight. With its AI Model and Application Validation feature, it automatically scans and tests AI models against hundreds of known vulnerabilities and threat vectors before they move into production. If vulnerabilities are found, Cisco AI Defense generates detailed reports and recommends guardrails that can be deployed through AI Runtime Protection to help secure your models in real-time.
A key innovation behind this capability is Cisco’s AI Algorithmic Red Team technology. Traditional application security relies on human red teams to uncover vulnerabilities, but that approach does not scale for the non-deterministic nature of AI models. Cisco has automated this process, allowing billions of interactions to be tested rapidly to find weaknesses in AI models before they are exploited in the real world.
Once an AI-enabled application is live, Cisco AI Defense continues to monitor and enforce policies in real-time, helping enterprises respond quickly to evolving threats without pulling applications offline. This is critical for organisations where downtime is costly or unacceptable.
Cisco AI Defense leverages Cisco’s proprietary machine learning models to detect AI safety and security concerns based on data from Splunk and Cisco Talos Threat Intelligence. It integrates with existing data flows for full visibility and control and is managed by Cisco Security Cloud Control. Security Cloud control, uses Multi-Cloud Defence (MCD) to detect and enforce across many Cisco products, including Cisco Secure Access.
By leveraging Cisco’s vast enforcement mesh, Cisco AI Defense applies security directly at the network level, offering protection that is uniquely powerful and seamless for existing Cisco environments.
Cisco is absolutely right when it says the multi-model, multi-cloud, and multi-agent reality of AI environments demands this kind of unified approach. Relying on fragmented safeguards from individual model vendors simply isn’t enough. Enterprises need their own AI governance framework that operates at the network level and enforces continuous validation across every aspect of AI usage.
AI adoption is moving faster than many organisations are ready for, and as someone working on the frontlines of cyber security, I see the massive growth in these risks every day. The dangers of “AI bleed”, where sensitive information leaks through poorly managed AI interactions, are already well-documented. Organisations cannot afford to wait for breaches to happen.
Cisco AI Defense is not just another product add-on. It represents a necessary shift in how we need to approach cyber security in the AI era. It gives organisations the ability to embrace AI innovation while protecting what matters most – the network, the users, and the business itself.
For organisations already invested in Cisco networking and security, Cisco AI Defense offers a straightforward path to securing the future. It builds on existing infrastructure, protects against emerging threats, and delivers a unified, policy-driven approach that is scalable, sustainable, and effective.
Curious about how Cisco AI Defense works in practice? Join us for an immersive event that’s part info session, part VR challenge—coming soon to a location near you. Discover how Cisco is securing the AI era, then gear up for a virtual mission to defeat rogue AI. Learn more