Tech News

Cisco Reimagines Security for Data Centers and Clouds in Era of AI

Published

2 years ago

April 18, 2024

News Summary:
Cisco powers and secures AI-scale data centers and clouds, safeguarding every application and device regardless of distribution or connectivity.

In today’s highly distributed landscape, the window from vulnerability to exploitation is shrinking rapidly.
Defending against this complex threat environment is beyond human scale.
Cisco Hypershield enables customers to deploy security wherever needed: in the cloud, data center, factory floor, or hospital imaging room.
With AI-native security, customers can autonomously segment networks, enjoy distributed and instant exploit protection without patches, and experience self-qualifying software upgrades with zero downtime.

News in Detail:
Cisco, the leader in security and networking, today unveiled a radically new approach to securing data centers and clouds in response to the increasing demands the AI revolution has put on IT infrastructure. Cisco is rearchitecting how we harness and protect AI and other modern workloads with industry-first, Cisco Hypershield. With this unprecedented innovation, Cisco is tipping the scales in favor of defenders, building on its recent announcements to accelerate AI infrastructure with Cisco’s ethernet switching, silicon and compute portfolio.

Cisco Hypershield protects applications, devices and data across public and private data centers, clouds and physical locations – anywhere customers need it. Designed and built with AI in mind from the start, Hypershield enables organizations to achieve security outcomes beyond what has been possible with humans alone.

“Cisco Hypershield is one of the most significant security innovations in our history,” said Chuck Robbins, Cisco Chair and CEO. “With our data advantage and strength in security, infrastructure and observability platforms, Cisco is uniquely positioned to help our customers harness the power of AI.”

Hypershield is a revolutionary new security architecture. It’s built with technology originally developed for hyperscale public clouds and is now available for enterprise IT teams of all sizes. More a fabric than a fence, Hypershield enables security enforcement to be placed everywhere it needs to be. Every application service in the datacenter. Every Kubernetes cluster in the public cloud. Every container and virtual machine (VM). It can even turn every network port into a high-performance security enforcement point, bringing completely new security capabilities not just to clouds, but to the data center, on a factory floor, or a hospital imaging room. This new technology blocks application exploits in minutes and stops lateral movement in its tracks.

“AI has the potential to empower the world’s 8 billion people to have the same impact as 80 billion. With this abundance, we must reimagine the role of the data center – how data centers are connected, secured, operated and scaled,” said Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and General Manager for Security and Collaboration at Cisco.

“The power of Cisco Hypershield is that it can put security anywhere you need it – in software, in a server, or in the future even in a network switch. When you have a distributed system that could include hundreds of thousands of enforcement points, simplified management is mission critical. And we need to be orders-of-magnitude more autonomous, at an orders-of-magnitude lower cost.”

Security enforcement with Hypershield happens at three different layers: in software, in virtual machines, and in network and compute servers and appliances, leveraging the same powerful hardware accelerators that are used extensively in high-performance computing and hyperscale public clouds.

Hypershield was built on three key pillars:

• AI-Native: Built and designed from the start to be autonomous and predictive, Hypershield manages itself once it earns trust, making a hyper-distributed approach at scale possible.
• Cloud-Native: Hypershield is built on open source eBPF, the default mechanism for connecting and protecting cloud-native workloads in the hyperscale cloud. Cisco acquired the leading provider of eBPF for enterprises, Isovalent, earlier this month.
• Hyper-Distributed: Cisco is completely reimagining how traditional network security works by embedding advanced security controls into servers and the network fabric itself. Hypershield spans all clouds and leverages hardware acceleration like Data Processing Units (DPU) to analyze and respond to anomalies in application and network behavior. It shifts security closer to the workloads that need protection.

Cisco, with its industry-leading expertise in networking, security and extensive partner ecosystem, together with NVIDIA, is committed to building and optimizing AI-native security solutions to protect and scale the data centers of tomorrow. This collaboration includes leveraging the NVIDIA Morpheus cybersecurity AI framework for accelerated network anomaly detection, as well as NVIDIA NIM microservices for powering custom security AI assistants for the enterprise. NVIDIA’s class of converged accelerators combine the power of GPU and DPU computing, to augment Cisco Hypershield with robust security from cloud to edge.

“Enterprises across all industries are seeking the security that can protect them against ever expanding cyber threats,” said Kevin Deierling, Senior Vice President of Networking at NVIDIA. “Together, Cisco and NVIDIA are leveraging the power of AI to deliver powerful, incredibly secure data center infrastructure that will enable enterprises to transform their businesses and benefit customers everywhere.”

As a revolutionary new security architecture, Hypershield is solving three key customer challenges in defending against today’s sophisticated threat landscape:

• Distributed Exploit Protection: Attackers are adept at weaponizing newly published vulnerabilities faster than defenders can patch. With defenders seeing nearly 100 new vulnerabilities every day, according to Cisco Talos Threat Intelligence, this can lead to catastrophic results. Hypershield delivers protection in minutes by automatically testing and deploying compensating controls into the distributed fabric of enforcement points.
• Autonomous Segmentation: Once an attacker is in the network, segmentation is key to stopping their lateral movement. Hypershield perpetually observes, auto-reasons and re-evaluates existing policies to autonomously segment the network, solving this in large and complex environments.
• Self-qualifying Upgrades: Hypershield automates the incredibly laborious and time-consuming process of testing and deploying upgrades once they are ready, leveraging a dual data plane. This completely new software architecture allows software upgrades and policy changes to be placed in a digital twin that tests updates using the customer’s unique combination of traffic, policies and features, then applying those updates with zero downtime.

Built into the Security Cloud, Cisco’s unified, AI-driven, cross-domain security platform, Cisco Hypershield is expected to be Generally Available in August 2024. With Cisco’s recent acquisition of Splunk, customers will gain unparalleled visibility and insights across their entire digital footprint for unprecedented security protection.

“AI is not just a force for good but also a tool used for nefarious purposes, allowing hackers to reverse engineer patches and create exploits in record time. Cisco looks to address an AI enabled problem with an AI solution as Cisco Hypershield aims to tip the scales back in favor of the defender by shielding new vulnerabilities against exploit in minutes – rather than the days, weeks or even months as we wait for patches to actually get deployed,” said Frank Dickson, Group Vice President, Security & Trust at IDC. “With the number of vulnerabilities ever increasing and the time for attackers to exploit them at scale ever decreasing, it’s clear that patching alone can’t keep up. Tools like Hypershield are necessary to combat an increasingly clever malicious cyber adversary.”

“Cisco Hypershield takes aim at the complex security challenges of modern, AI-scale data centers. Cisco’s vision of a self-managing fabric that seamlessly integrates from the network to the endpoint will help redefine what’s possible for security at scale,” said Zeus Kerravala, Founder and Principal Analyst of ZK Research. “For instance, this level of visibility and control across a hyper-distributed environment prevents lateral movement of attackers, enabled through a unique approach to segmentation that’s autonomous and highly effective. While this may seem fantastical, the time is right given recent AI advances combined with the maturity of cloud-native technologies like eBPF.”

“At AHEAD we believe cybersecurity should be integrated into everything we do. Bolted-on security is more expensive and less effective,” said Steven Aiello, Field Chief Information Security Officer at AHEAD. “Cisco Hypershield ensures that cyber protections are included into the fabric of the enterprise. Distributed Exploit Protection will be a massive win for blue teams – legacy synthetic patching was primarily limited to edge devices, allowing lateral movement once an attacker breached the perimeter. It’s a great day for cyber-defenders!”

Tech News

UAE EXIT FROM OPEC SIGNALS SHIFT IN OIL MARKET DYNAMICS, SUPPORTING ABU DHABI ENERGY STOCKS

Published

3 days ago

April 30, 2026

Integrator Web-Admin

The recent rise in Abu Dhabi-listed energy stocks reflects growing investor confidence in the UAE’s increased strategic flexibility following its exit from OPEC, according to Sam North, Market Analyst at eToro.

North explained that markets are not pricing in an immediate surge in oil production, but rather a longer-term shift in optionality. “The move is being interpreted as a structural change that allows the UAE to monetise its expanded production capacity more efficiently,” he said. “This creates a clearer growth narrative across upstream activity, drilling, infrastructure, gas processing and dividend potential.”

However, he cautioned that higher output is not guaranteed in the near term. “Production cannot simply ramp up overnight. Logistics, regional security risks and the broader oil price reaction remain critical constraints. If additional supply materially lowers crude prices, it could offset gains from higher volumes,” he added.

OPEC Influence Faces Pressure, but Not Collapse
While the UAE’s departure raises questions about OPEC’s long-term cohesion, markets are not yet pricing in a full breakdown of the cartel’s pricing power. Instead, North noted a gradual shift. “This is more than a short-term disruption, but it is not the end of OPEC. The real risk is fragmentation over time if members prioritise individual revenue over collective discipline.”

Investors are increasingly monitoring key indicators to assess whether market control is shifting. These include compliance levels among remaining OPEC+ members, rising supply from non-OPEC producers such as the US, Brazil and Guyana, as well as inventory builds and oil futures pricing trends.

“OPEC’s influence is ultimately measured by whether its decisions continue to move physical barrels and prices, not by official statements,” North said.

Oil Prices Supported by Geopolitical Risk
Despite expectations of increased supply, oil prices remain supported by geopolitical tensions, particularly around the Strait of Hormuz. Brent crude trading near elevated levels reflects this balance between supply expectations and risk premiums.

“The UAE’s potential output acts more as a stabilising force preventing extreme price spikes, rather than driving a sustained sell-off,” North noted. “Around a quarter of global seaborne oil passes through Hormuz, so any disruption continues to embed a premium in prices.”

Diverging Impact Across Energy Equities
Energy equities are responding unevenly to the evolving landscape. Companies with direct exposure to UAE production growth and infrastructure are benefiting from increased activity expectations, while global oil majors face a more mixed outlook.

“Higher volumes support services and investment, but a weaker OPEC framework could lower long-term price floors,” North said. “Investors are rewarding firms tied to UAE expansion while becoming more selective toward producers reliant on high crude prices.”

Macro Implications: Inflation and Global Markets
Lower oil prices, if sustained, could provide support to global equity markets, particularly in oil-importing economies such as India. Cheaper crude typically improves trade balances, reduces inflationary pressure and supports consumer demand.

At a macro level, increased supply could help ease global inflation, though central bank responses will remain cautious. “Lower energy costs are disinflationary, but policymakers will look for sustained trends and broader indicators such as wages and core inflation before adjusting rates,” North said.

He added that geopolitical risks continue to complicate the outlook. “Supply expectations point toward lower inflation, but disruptions in key transit routes like Hormuz introduce upside risks. The overall impact on rates is marginally dovish, but still conditional on stability.”

Tech News

SHURE SIGNS HUB MEDIA TO STRENGTHEN DISTRIBUTION ACROSS AFRICA

Published

3 days ago

April 30, 2026

Integrator Web-Admin

Shure has appointed Hub Media as its authorized distributor for African markets, in a move aimed at strengthening access to professional audio solutions across the continent.

The appointment comes at a time when African markets are continuing to invest in stronger learning and communication environments. [1] UNESCO projects that the number of young Africans completing secondary or tertiary education will rise from 103 million in 2020 to 240 million by 2040, pointing to growing demand for more connected and effective learning spaces across the continent. Through Hub Media’s regional presence and distribution capabilities, Shure’s portfolio will be made more readily available across African markets, helping customers benefit from improved access to products, technical support, and training.

Olga Elena, Sales Leader at Hub Media, said, “This partnership brings together Shure’s global audio expertise and Hub Media’s regional market presence. Our focus will be on making Shure’s portfolio more accessible across Africa, while supporting partners and end users with the service, training, and technical guidance needed in the field.”

The partnership is expected to support customers across sectors including corporate, education, government, broadcast, houses of worship, live events, and musical instrument retail channels, where the need for reliable audio performance and informed local support continues to grow.

It also comes amid continued momentum across key regional markets. [2] PwC’s Africa Entertainment and Media Outlook 2025–2029 projects compound annual growth rates of 7.2% for Nigeria and 5.2% for Kenya through 2029, reflecting sustained growth across media and content environments in West and East Africa. Beyond distribution, the collaboration will include solution design support, system configuration, technical consultation, partner training, and after-sales support, helping ensure customers can deploy Shure solutions with greater confidence and relevance to local market needs.

Yassine Mannai, Associate Sales Director at Shure MEA, added: “As demand continues to evolve across Africa, it is increasingly important for customers to have both access to the right technology and the support needed to deploy it effectively. Our partnership with Hub Media reflects that focus, allowing us to strengthen availability, technical engagement, and customer support across key markets.”

The move signals Shure’s wider MEA focus on strengthening its channel network and building for long-term growth across key markets.

Tech News

NEW SMARTSUITE INTEGRATION BRINGS IQSIGHT VIDEO INTELLIGENCE SEAMLESSLY INTO MILESTONE XPROTECT

Published

3 days ago

April 30, 2026

Integrator Web-Admin

Milestone Systems and IQSIGHT, formerly Bosch Video Systems, announced the global release of SmartSuite, a consolidated plugin suite that embeds Intelligent Video Analytics from IQSIGHT directly into Milestone’s XProtect® video management software (VMS).

In the Middle East, where countries like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are rapidly embedding artificial intelligence (AI) across public safety, smart cities, transport networks, and critical infrastructure, SmartSuite arrives at a pivotal moment for regional security technology transformation.

Streamlining system setup and leveraging rich metadata, the SmartSuite integration empowers security professionals to configure hardware, surface analytics, and manage operations within XProtect as a single pane of glass. Bringing this data from SmartSuite directly into XProtect adds intelligence to deliver deeper forensic insights, accelerated incident response, and operational efficiency, providing the foresight needed for organizations to proactively address security and safety risks.

Key benefits include:

Enhances operator awareness and investigation

Surfaces rich metadata within XProtect, including color‑coded bounding boxes, object classification, trajectory lines, and gunshot direction indicators.
Supports forensic search and real‑time metadata visualization for Intelligent Video Analytics Pro (IVA Pro) analytics, such as Appearance and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).

Compatible with IVA Pro Visual Gun Detection, designed to detect a person brandishing a gun and promptly alert personnel to support faster threat identification in environments such as schools.
Governments and enterprises across the Gulf are prioritizing AI‑enabled safety systems as part of smart city and national digital strategies, especially in cities like Dubai and Abu Dhabi, which host leading security and technology expos and initiatives.

“In the Middle East, where security and operational intelligence continue to be strategic priorities across critical infrastructure, smart cities, and enterprise environments, the advancements Milestone Systems is announcing today represent a significant leap forward,” said Louise Bou Rached, Director- Middle East, Turkey, and Africa.

Streamlines installation and system setup

Reduces installation time for system integrators by up to 70% by consolidating three separate plug‑ins into one unified suite*.
Includes panoramic de‑warping and hardware control features such as wipers and infrared illumination.
Adds Project Assistant import capabilities, enabling automatic configuration of Bosch camera names, groups, network settings, and image adjustments to speed up commissioning.

Simplifies device configuration

Allows integrators to configure Bosch cameras directly within the XProtect Management Client, eliminating the need to log in to each device or switch between Milestone and external configuration environments.
Introduces fast event subscription, making it easier to set up analytics-driven alarms and notifications.

SmartSuite is available globally, free of charge, and can be downloaded via IQSIGHT.com.

Sebastian Döllner, Vice President for Technology Partnerships, C Open Platform, Milestone Systems, said:

“SmartSuite raises the bar for integrated security management and provides a powerful new way to unify systems, insights, and action. By bringing together the advanced technologies and expertise of IQSIGHT and Milestone, we enable our customers to strengthen their security operations and respond to incidents faster and more precisely. This collaboration showcases the power of open platform innovation and delivers meaningful value to security professionals worldwide.”

Sam Ward, Chief Commercial Officer, Global Sales, IQSIGHT, said:

“The introduction of SmartSuite enables organizations to seamlessly surface real-time insights within their environments to speed decision-making in critical situations. Together with Milestone, we continue to deepen the integration of our solutions to expand visual intelligence capabilities and further enhance the benefits for our shared customers.”