As generative artificial intelligence tools are becoming more prevalent in the workplace, employees are accessing these tools via personal accounts on company devices, pasting in sensitive data, and downloading content — all of which creates potential security risks. Meanwhile, cybercriminals are capitalizing on this trend by weaponizing AI and impersonating trusted tools.
Palo Alto Networks Inc. kicked off the annual Black Hat USA security conference in Las Vegas this week with today’s announcement of its Cortex Cloud Application Security Posture Management solution. The ASPM offering is designed to fix security issues before cloud and AI applications have been deployed. The traditional method of securing apps is a highly fragmented set of manual processes. Instead of a single, unified platform, developers rely on a collection of point products and manual processes that are disconnected from each other.
Palo Alto Networks Inc.‘s announcement Tuesday of its intent to acquire CyberArk for $25 billion implies a heavy price tag, as its shares fell on the news. But I believe it to be a good, long-term strategic move for Palo Alto and a logical extension of its platformization strategy. Valuation is interesting to look at but highly overrated long-term. If an acquisition is a good one and helps transform a company, then the purchase price won’t matter over time. Consider the purchase of Mellanox Technologies Ltd. by Nvidia Corp., which was almost $7 billion in 2019.
Jeetu Patel, Cisco Systems Inc.‘s president and chief product officer, told me before last week’s annual user event that it would be “the most consequential Cisco Live of the past decade and perhaps longer.” There were a few reasons for Patel’s bullishness. The first is artificial intelligence. The core tenet of my research is that share shifts happen when markets transition, and Cisco’s ability to articulate its strategy now will allow it to rise when the AI tide does.
As zero-trust security vendor Zscaler Inc. held its user event, Zenith Live, this week in Las Vegas, Chief Executive Jay Chaudhry sought to shift the company’s traditional narrative. In his Tuesday keynote, rather than focus on Zscaler as a replacement for virtual private networks and firewalls — though that was clearly articulated as well — Chaudhry (pictured) emphasized how zero trust everywhere could unlock the potential of artificial intelligence.