It was a strong start to the new year with an incredible week in Amsterdam, where the gloomy weather was a stark contrast to the excitement and energy of the 16,000 people who came together to talk… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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It was a strong start to the new year with an incredible week in Amsterdam, where the gloomy weather was a stark contrast to the excitement and energy of the 16,000 people who came together to talk with peers and experts about the biggest challenges and trends in the technology industry. With huge announcements, countless breakout sessions, live demos, and interactive booths, Cisco Live EMEA 2024 was a success to set the pace for the year ahead.

Power of the platform

Last year, we launched the vision for our full-stack observability solutions. This year, we brought it to life to deliver on the ideals and most pressing concerns we heard from our customers. Cisco Observability Platform is bringing together network insights, security insights, and application intelligence together to help organizations deliver flawless and secure digital experiences for everyone and every time.

With digital experiences top of mind, we were thrilled to announce the expansion of Cisco Digital Experience Monitoring with Session Replay— the “Netflix” for observability— which enables customers to record and then playback user sessions to resolve issues with better precision.

Ronak Desai presents on Digital Experience Monitoring

We also announced an expansion of Business Risk Observability with Data Security Posture Management capabilities, helping organizations to discover, classify, and quickly take action to protect their sensitive data and their brands.

AI was a big topic of discussion throughout the week and further amplified by the announcement of the general availability of Cisco AIOps, providing actionable insights for organizations to improve IT operations and reduce mean time to detect and repair with streamlined incident management and change management. We’ve also added natural language interface for easier querying and troubleshooting.

The introduction of eight new partner modules underscored the power of an extensible platform for rapid innovation. As Ronak mentioned during his Keynote, partners have launched 18 modules since since Cisco Observability Platform hit the market which is equivalent to one every week! The full lineup of announcements is just a scratch on the surface of what’s to come.

Cloud Application Security with context

The buzz around AI continued as we launched innovations for Cisco Cloud Application Security (Panoptica). We announced the Cisco AI Assistant for Cisco Cloud Application Security which is a Generative AI-based assistant that helps customers understand, prioritize, investigate, and remediate security issues with a “lens-like” interface that allows users to place the focus on specific areas. We also introduced GenAI Protection to  safeguard Generative-AI applications from LLM targeted risk vectors.

Support for GenAI journey

Amid the growing artificial intelligence and security compliance demands of enterprises, attendees got a preview of Motific— the brand new SaaS offering that enables teams to deploy GenAI with speed and efficiency, mitigate risk and ensure compliance, and track return on investment and business insights while optimizing costs. With Motific, teams will be better equipped to innovate rapidly and deliver trustworthy GenAI capabilities across their organizations with control.

Vijoy Pandey presents the latest from Outshift by Cisco

Insights from The Experts

Throughout the week, there were so many opportunities to learn more about the new and existing capabilities as we heard from customers, partners, and industry experts. Attendees were invited to hear from over 20 different Cisco Partners during a variety of sessions in the Partner Theater. And our customers took the stage, including Johannes Damson of Bosch and Petek Ergul of HSBC, to share insights about how their organizations leverage Cisco Full-Stack Observability to meet their business goals.

Petek Ergul from HSBC shares the stage with Ronak Desai

Johannes joined Ronak during an IT Leadership session to address the growing complexity behind delivering optimal and secure digital experiences, while Petek joined Ronak onstage during his Keynote to share the strategy and vision of HSBC as they transform into a digital-first bank  with an emphasis on resilience and trust. She shared further insights with us during an Innovation Talk featuring a demo of Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM).

In just one of the many incredible breakout sessions, we had a chance to dive deeper into the full potential of Digital Experience Monitoring with Cisco experts Carlos Pereira and Emily Wang. Expanding on the new observability announcements, Carlos hosted another session breaking down the ins and outs of Cisco AIOps, and Ananda Rajagopal outlined and demonstrated some of the new AI capabilities during a great session on AI in Observability.

Carlos Pereira presents at Cisco Live EMEA

More breakout session highlights include exploring offensive security approaches with Rami Haddad, the importance of cloud-asset visibility and risk prioritization with Tim Miller, and leveraging Generative AI to strength security postures with Peter Bosch. With so many to choose from, we highly recommend keeping tabs on the on-demand library to tune into these or any others you missed.

Cisco Live EMEA 2024 Wrapped

It was a jam packed and unforgettable week in Amsterdam, and rest assured our teams are already hard at work to deliver even more game changing innovations and announcements at Cisco Live US in June. We’re grateful for everyone who came out ready to learn and build the meaningful connections that help us bring our mission to live. If you weren’t able to attend, you can sign up for a Cisco Live account for free and watch the sessions.

To learn more about our newest innovations and launches, explore the microsite.

"}]]  Cisco Stategy, Incubation and Applications showed up strong at Cisco Live EMEA 2024 with huge announcements, countless breakout sessions, live demos, and interactive booths. Get the latest news.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

Making hot desking secure and accessible on a global scale

The first rule of interviewing a CISO at the Australian division of Laing O’Rourke is this: You can’t dig deep into use cases or cli… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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Making hot desking secure and accessible on a global scale

The first rule of interviewing a CISO at the Australian division of Laing O’Rourke is this: You can’t dig deep into use cases or clients.

And this makes perfect sense, because when you’re responsible for securing critical infrastructure for an AUD $6 billion global construction and engineering firm, with projects ranging from transport to defense, even scant details can lead to cyberattacks.

Crafting security for joint ventures, and a very distributed network

Despite the high stakes, Laing O’Rourke’s security challenges are distinctly universal – especially post-2020, where the world saw a massive boost in the sophistication and number of DDoS, VPN, and other web-related attacks. And like peer companies, the company needed to set a firm foundation to block internet-based attacks on distributed infrastructure.

But here’s where things are different. Thanks to business requirements, Laing O’Rourke’s network environment is complex. The company often works on what James Fields, Group Deputy CISO for Laing O’Rourke, calls “mega projects,” joint ventures (JVs) with other companies that are – to put it plainly – competitors.

“Being a construction business, physical security is a real challenge out on project sites. Often, for some of our larger-scale projects, we find ourselves in collaborative partnerships with our rivals,'” Fields commented. “At one moment, they’re our partners in a project, and in the next, they could be our competitors for fresh contracts. By engaging in these joint ventures, we’re effectively inviting our competition into our network.”

So, it is imperative that Laing O’Rourke delivers secure network access to staff, clients and JV partners in a hot-desking environment AND satisfy clients demanding adherence to different frameworks and certification. The company must also prevent threat actors — as well as anyone who could benefit competitively, financially, or in any other way – – from accessing or exfiltrating information from the network.

And they did it this by adding two different Cisco solutions to the stack: Cisco Secure Firewall and Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE).

Streamlining security in the face of unnecessary, time-consuming tasks

Getting backing from leadership to invest in the best traffic and threat management tools can seem impossible for many teams. Thankfully, Fields has enthusiastic backing from the board.

“My team and I are truly passionate about cybersecurity, and we have the board’s support not just for compliance’s sake (not just performing a tick box exercise), but also for establishing the best practices and instilling a cyber-centric mindset throughout the business.”

But that doesn’t mean it’s been easy building that framework.

As a snapshot, before Cisco ISE, Fields says, “Our joint venture partners and clients had a potential risk of unintentionally (or deliberately) accessing our corporate network due to shared office space. This prevented business agility, necessitating fixed desks. Consequently, IT had to frequently reconfigure ports on project sites as staff assignments changed based on project phases or collaboration needs.”

Developing those pre-designed workspaces based on whether the user was from Laing O’Rourke, or a JV took precious time and energy that could have been used elsewhere. The Laing O’Rourke team needed intelligent automation to streamline the process.

Laing O’Rourke already had multiple firewalls in place, but it needed a Cisco Secure Firewall to help the company control network access, prevent intrusions and exfiltration, filter URLs, and conduct deep packet inspection. Meanwhile, Cisco ISE would help wrangle all those joint venture devices.

Since the Laing O’Rourke team was already using Cisco switches and was familiar with how Cisco solutions work, it made the choice to add more Cisco to the stack all that much easier.

“We, like most enterprises, use Cisco switches at our core and at the edge. So it made sense to talk to Cisco about how they could help us protect our network.”

Using Cisco Secure Firewall to streamline access and safeguard the network

Laing O’Rourke needed physical security that could accommodate hybrid staff members and contractors through hot-desking (multiple workers using a single physical workstation) and achieving seamless connectivity and network management was crucial.

To address this, Laing O’Rourke turned to Cisco Secure Firewall, allowing the company to achieve and maintain the confidentiality, integrity, and availability — the coveted CIA triad — of data. By effectively controlling network access and preventing unauthorized data changes, Cisco Secure Firewall played a pivotal role in safeguarding Laing O’Rourke’s network infrastructure.

Key stakeholders, including Fields, emphasized the importance of Cisco’s wide-ranging threat intelligence. These updates ensured that the firewalls remain current with the latest threat and vulnerability signatures, reinforcing the strength and effectiveness of Laing O’Rourke’s security measures.

By partnering with Cisco, Laing O’Rourke has enhanced its ability to identify and mitigate a wide range of threats by using advanced features of Cisco Secure Firewall, including intrusion prevention, URL filtering, and deep packet inspection capabilities.

The team also used Firewall Management Center (FMC) dashboards to manage firewalls using a single pane of glass, which was ultra-convenient when they needed insights on intrusion events, potential threats, and geolocation. Thanks to the proactive security measures implemented through Cisco’s Secure Firewall solution, Laing O’Rourke has experienced a considerable decrease in web-related vulnerability attacks.

Once the Cisco Firewall was in place for Laing O’Rourke, it was ready to do what it’s known for: helping prevent DDOS, malware, VPN, and many other attacks.

“When it comes to firewalling, we take a dual vendor approach. Around five years ago we went out to market to replace our [competitor] firewalls. Given our positive experience with Cisco’s networking equipment, Cisco FTD’s were on our shopping list,” Fields said. “We still take a dual vendor approach and Cisco is still helping secure our edge.”

Adding a zero-trust framework with ISE for identity

Cisco Secure Firewall has proven itself a formidable force to manage traffic and block threats, with automatic updates and frequent attack intel as a sweetener. But ISE has been a revelation for Laing O’Rourke, giving the team a firm, confident hand when managing IP phones, tablets, and laptops – all used to conduct business.

“ISE was a real game changer for us. It has transformed the way we operate on project sites, negating the need for predefined workspaces based on if the user was a Laing O’Rourke staff member, JV partner, client, or guest, while simultaneously increasing protection of our corporate network”.

With ISE, ports can be configured to dynamically reconfigure a port based on security posture and device ownership, permitting access to the right network segments at the right time. This includes access to the company’s corporate wireless (and wired) networks, guest Wi-Fi, and BYOD – including operational technology (OT) networks.

“While ISE takes a bit of effort to set up right, once it up and running, it’s a very stable platform, easy to configure and integrates well with other security platforms like Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) and mobile device management (MDM) solutions,” Fields said.

If he had to name three things that make Cisco ISE a solid solution for Laing O’Rourke, Fields spoke of dynamic profiling that detects device type and applies the right policy, the MDM integration and compliance check that makes sure devices are up-to-date, and anomalous behaviour detection.

According to Fields, many years ago, a pen-tester discovered a technical gap that absolutely needed to be closed. So now when an IP phone starts to communicate as Windows traffic, for instance, ISE catches it with behavioural detection.

“With the lack of physical security on our project sites, along with actively inviting our competitors onto our network, seems like a disaster waiting to happen,” he said. “Cisco ISE has proven to be an invaluable solution for segregating access between our employees and our clients and partners, protecting us from threat actors and rogue network devices.”

Cisco Secure Firewall and ISE save money and time

Many network and security pros understand how painful it can be to secure a network – especially one that’s distributed. But with a Cisco Secure Firewall in play and ISE to manage BYODs, Laing O’Rourke’s networking team has already seen a difference.

To start, those Monday morning calls about desk moves and disrupted network access are no more. Laing O’Rourke is saving minutes, hours, and days, while simultaneously bolstering network security:  something that notoriously…takes time.

The user experience has improved, and the team has more time to focus on threats. Though Laing O’Rourke uses a dual vendor approach, Cisco is the go-to for this critical, global company, with ROI already evident once the company’s other firewalls were replaced with Cisco Firewalls.

“The [competitor] firewalls were significantly more expensive and offered no additional functionality. The replacement [Cisco] actually saved us money,” Fields said. “What I can say is one of the few things that doesn’t keep me up at night is our network uptime or network-based security — thanks to Cisco Firewall Threat Defense (FTD) and Cisco ISE.”

Want to secure your organization’s hot desking?

Check out Cisco Secure Firewall and (ISE) Identify Services Engine — solutions Laing O’Rourke utilized to protect their network and people. Learn more about how Cisco has helped other customers achieve Security Resilience.

We’d love to hear what you think. Ask a Question, Comment Below, and Stay Connected with Cisco Security on social!

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"}]]  Laing O'Rourke used Cisco Secure Firewall and Identity Services Engine to deliver global, secure network access. Here's how it all happened.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have played a critical role in higher education in the United States. Founded during Reconstruction, these institutions became a pathway for… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have played a critical role in higher education in the United States. Founded during Reconstruction, these institutions became a pathway for advancement and hope for Black students who were barred from attending most colleges and universities in the US. HBCUs were at the forefront of the civil rights movement, organizing protests and sit-ins and advocating for equal rights, and they continue to support their communities through their commitment to social justice and equality. HBCUs continue to play a critical role in providing education and career opportunities for Black students. While they represent only 3% of all higher-education institutions in the United States, they enroll 10% of all Black college students and accounted for 17% of all bachelor’s degrees and 24% of all STEM-related bachelor’s degrees earned by Black students in the United States in 2019(1). Additionally, 40% of Black engineers, 50% of Black lawyers, 70% of Black doctors, and 80% of Black judges attended an HBCU(2).

Navigating Budget Constraints and Cybersecurity Compliance

HBCUs are not without challenges, particularly regarding technology. Many HBCUs face budget constraints that prevent them from upgrading their technology platforms, which puts them at a significant disadvantage given the increased reliance on digitization and hybrid teaching. The federal government will soon require that institutions administering federal student aid programs authorized under the US Department of Education’s Title IV (including Pell Grants, Director Loans and Federal Work Study) comply with NIST 800–171, a set of security standards under the NIST Cybersecurity Framework required for universities with contractual ties to the federal government. HBCUs rely heavily on Title IV funding and the possibility of failing to meet the standards puts them and their students at risk of losing access to these funds.

Partnering to Empower HBCUs for a Better Tomorrow

Cisco has worked closely with HBCUs to address their technology challenges as part of its commitment to an inclusive future for all and social justice. One example is the support Cisco is providing Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Working in partnership with the Student Freedom Initiative, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making college more affordable for students attending minority-serving institutions, Cisco is donating over $1.7 million in products, services, and training over five years to address their technology needs. Additionally, Cisco is helping Claflin and other HBCUs meet NIST compliance.

Ensuring HBCUs Continue Their Legacy

One of the Cisco team members leading this effort is Shaunya Ishmael, a graduate of Tuskegee University and Clark Atlanta University. She said the following about her work on this project and her time at HBCUs: “My HBCU was a great environment to discover who I was…I was in a safe place. The work I get to do here at Cisco to help HBCUs with NIST compliance will help ensure these institutions are open to serve future generations and continue to be pillars in their communities.”

To see more about Cisco’s work with HBCUs, check out this video:

For more information on how Cisco can support your education needs,

explore all of our solutions at Cisco for Education.

References:

(1) How HBCUs can accelerate Black economic mobility

(2) A Proclamation on National Historically Black Colleges and Universities Week, 2022

"}]]  Learn more about Cisco's collaboration with HBCUs and the Student Freedom Initiative to bolster NIST compliance and ensure the longevity of HBCUs.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

For those who joined us at Cisco Live! Amsterdam earlier this month, you might not have noticed that the venue featured a Private 5G Network established in partnership with NTT DATA.

Spanning two… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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For those who joined us at Cisco Live! Amsterdam earlier this month, you might not have noticed that the venue featured a Private 5G Network established in partnership with NTT DATA.

Spanning two halls at RAI Amsterdam, or roughly 26,000 square meters, the seamless integration of this Private 5G network augmented the existing Wi-Fi network, pushing the boundaries of traditional connectivity, and creating a smart venue—a first for Cisco Live!

Built with the support of Intel, the Cisco Country Digital Acceleration team, and RAI Amsterdam—a conference and exhibition space that hosts millions of visitors annually—NTT DATA’s Private 5G network included four radios supporting mission critical and latency-sensitive applications. RAI also had over one hundred Wi-Fi access points supporting the user experience in the same location.

The entire ecosystem performed flawlessly. During busy hours with a full load on the network, Private 5G latency was a speedy 21.9 miliseconds, and Wi-Fi latency was 86 miliseconds. It was incredibly exciting to be part of the future of multi-access connectivity—wired and wireless, Wi-Fi, 4G and 5G, all brought together to enable a seamless digital experience.

The NTT DATA Private 5G-powered communication and streaming services were featured at Cisco Live! Amsterdam as part of the NTT DATA’s Smart Venue Solution, and included the following use cases:

Mobile broadcasting – wireless video crews roamed the exhibition halls with low latency and high bandwidth, delivering a streamlined multi-camera environment.
Visitor traffic management – Cisco’s Meraki cameras and NTT DATA’s Smart Management Platform tracked visitor movements and congestion, enabling operations and security teams to communicate real-time, data-driven crowd control decisions.
Emergency Response Vehicle (ERV) – Pre-packaged, flexible FWA Private 5G connectivity was setup and used to mimic rural cellular/satellite backhaul.
Premium Booth Connectivity – When the booth is already built and the floor is laid, network cable cannot be raised. P5G provided booth broadband for the exhibitor.
NTT Coffee Booth – Cisco’s Meraki cameras and the NTT DATA’s Smart Management Platform monitored and managed queues and seating to optimize the on-site experience.
Enhanced exhibitor experiences – Cisco’s Meraki cameras embedded throughout the venue and in booths captured anonymized data including the number of visitors and time spent in the booth to use for planning and to create better customer experiences.
Out of Band management – The Private 5G network, backhaul connectivity, and network operations center were integrated to provide the Cisco Live! events team with faster coordination and emergency response capabilities.
Venue Safety – Machine vision detected whether individuals were wearing Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) through a real-time alert system, helping to ensure safety throughout the convention center’s facilities.

Figure 1. NTT DATA Smart Venue Dashboard

Beyond the experience for event attendees, RAI benefited from the as-a-Service (aaS) model, which made it easy for them to “turn up” and support large amounts of data and real-time insights on the fly, seamlessly augmenting onsite experiences. Turning up 5G capabilities on an ad hoc basis is the ideal solution for conference centers that host large numbers of exhibitors and visitors.

Outfitting RAI with the ability to support advanced connectivity experiences was just the first step, our goal at Cisco is to provide our Service Provider customers with the seamless and flexible technology they need to create business outcomes that deliver on the bottom line.

According to Shahid Ahmed, Group Executive Vice President of New Ventures and Innovation at NTT DATA: “Private 5G and advanced analytics play a pivotal role in accelerating digitial transformation across industries and serve as a driving force to create smarter cities and venues. We are thrilled to partner with Cisco on this unique project. Private 5G excels in a complex environment like this one, and together with our Smart Management Platform will be the catalyst that accelerates the digital transformation journey for RAI and the City of Amsterdam.”

And the next steps at RAI? Cisco and NTT DATA plan to extend 5G coverage following Cisco Live to the venue’s vast 112,000 square meter footprint.

Discover how Cisco Private 5G simplifies 5G and IoT operations

"}]]  Spanning two halls at RAI Amsterdam, or roughly 26,000 square meters, the seamless integration of a Cisco Private 5G network, in partnership with NTT, pushed the boundaries of traditional connectivity, and creating a smart venue, a first for Cisco Live!  Read More Cisco Blogs 

Human-like interaction with B2B solutions, bespoke multimodal LLMs for better accuracy and precision, curated workflow automation via LAMs and customized B2B applications will become the norm as… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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Human-like interaction with B2B solutions, bespoke multimodal LLMs for better accuracy and precision, curated workflow automation via LAMs and customized B2B applications will become the norm as GenAI expands in the business sphere.

With the rapid launch of new solutions powered by generative AI (GenAI), the business-to-business (B2B) landscape is being reshaped in front of our eyes. Many organizations have taken a cautious and meticulously planned approach to widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), however the Cisco AI Readiness Index reveals just how much pressure they are now feeling.

Adverse business impacts are anticipated by 61% of organizations if they have not implemented an AI strategy within the next year. In some cases, the window may even be narrower as competitors pull away, leaving very little time to properly execute plans. The clock is ticking, and the call for AI integration – especially GenAI – is now louder than ever.

In her predictions of tech trends for the new year, Chief Strategy Officer and GM of Applications, Liz Centoni said GenAI-powered Natural Language Interfaces (NLIs) will become the norm for new products and services. “NLIs powered by GenAI will be expected for new products and more than half will have this by default by the end of 2024.”

NLIs allow users to interact with applications and systems using normal language and spoken commands as with AI assistants, for instance, to instigate functionality and dig for deeper understanding. This capability will become available across most business-to-consumer (B2C) applications and services in 2024, especially for question-and-answer (Q&A) type of interactions between a human and a “machine”. However, associated B2B workflows and dependencies will require additional context and control for GenAI solutions to effectively elevate the overall business.

The point-and-click approach enabled by graphic user interfaces (GUIs) effectively binds users to a limited set of capabilities, and a restricted view of data that is based on the GUI requirements set by the business at the point of design. Multi-modal prompt interfaces (mainly text and audio) are fast changing that paradigm and expanding the UI/UX potential and scope. In the coming year, we’ll see B2B organizations increasingly leverage NLIs and context to “ask” specific questions about available data, freeing them from traditional constraints and offering a faster path to insight for complex queries and interactions.

A good example of this is the contact center and its system support chatbots as a B2C interface. Their user experience will continue to be transformed by GenAI-enabled NLIs and multi-modal assistants in 2024, but the natural next step is to enrich GenAI with additional context, enabling it to augment B2B dependencies (like services) and back-end systems interactions, like application programming interfaces (APIs) to further boost accuracy and reach, minimize response time, and enhance user satisfaction.

Meanwhile, as the relevance of in-context faster paths to insights increases and the associated GenAI-enabled data flows become mainstream, large action models (LAMs) will start to be considered as a potential future step to automate some of enterprise workflows, most likely starting in the realm of IT, security, and auditing and compliance.

Additional B2B considerations with GenAI

As Centoni said, GenAI will be increasingly leveraged in B2B interactions with users demanding more contextualized, personalized, and integrated solutions. “GenAI will offer APIs, interfaces, and services to access, analyze, and visualize data and insights, becoming pervasive across areas such as project management, software quality and testing, compliance assessments, and recruitment efforts. As a result, observability for AI will grow.”

As the use of GenAI grows exponentially, this will simultaneously amplify the need for comprehensive and deeper observability. AI revolutionizes the way we analyze and process data, and observability too is fast evolving with it to offer an even more intelligent and automated approach from monitoring and triage across real-time dependencies up to troubleshooting of complex systems and the deployment of automated actions and responses.

Observability over modern applications and systems, including those that are powered by or leverage AI capabilities, will be increasingly augmented by GenAI for root-cause analysis, predictive analysis and, for example, to drill down on multi-cloud resource allocation and costs, as well as the performance and security of digital experiences.

Driven by growing demand for integrated solutions they can adapt to their specific needs, B2B providers are turning to GenAI to power services that boost productivity and accomplish tasks more efficiently than their current systems and implementations. Among these is the ability to access and analyze vast volumes of data to derive insights that can be used to develop new products, optimize dependencies, as well as design and refine the digital experiences supported by applications.

Starting in 2024, GenAI will be an integral part of business context, therefore observability will naturally need to extend to it, making the full stack observability scope a bit wider. Besides costs, GenAI-enabled B2B interactions will be particularly sensitive to both latency and jitter. This fact alone will drive significant growth in demand over the coming year for end-to-end observability – including the internet, as well as critical networks, empowering these B2B interactions to keep AI-powered applications running at peak performance.

On the other hand, as businesses recognize potential pitfalls and seek increased control and flexibility over their AI models training, data retention, and expendability processes, the demand for either bespoke or both domain-specific GenAI large language models (LLMs) will also increase significantly in 2024. As a result, organizations will pick up the pace of adapting GenAI LLM models to their specific requirements and contexts by leveraging private data and introducing up-to-date information via retrieval augmented generation (RAG), fine-tuning parameters, and scaling models appropriately.

Moving fast towards contextual understanding and reasoning

GenAI has already evolved from reliance on a single data modality to include training on text, images, video, audio, and other inputs simultaneously. Just as humans learn by taking in multiple types of data to create more complete understanding, the growing ability of GenAI to consume multiple modalities is another significant step towards greater contextual understanding.

These multi-modal capabilities are still in the early stages, although they are already being considered for business interactions. Multi-modality is also key to the future of LAMs – sometimes called AI agents – as they bring complex reasoning and provide multi-hop thinking and the ability to generate actionable outputs.

True multi-modality not only improves overall accuracy, but it also exponentially expands the possible use cases, including for B2B applications. Consider a customer sentiment model tied to a forecast trending application that can capture and interpret audio, text, and video for complete insight that includes context such as tone of voice and body language, instead of simply transcribing the audio. Recent advances allow RAG to handle both text and images. In a multi-modal setup, images can be retrieved from a vector database and passed through a large multimodal model (LMM) for generation. The RAG method thus enhances the efficiency of tasks as it can be fine-tuned, and its knowledge can be updated easily without requiring entire model retraining.

With RAG in the picture, consider now a model that identifies and analyzes commonalities and patterns in job interviews data by consuming resumes, job requisitions across the industry (from peers and competitors), online activities (from social media up to posted lectures in video) but then being augmented by also consuming the candidate-recruiter emails interactions as well the actual interview video calls.   That example shows how both RAG and responsible AI will be in high demand during 2024.

In summary, in the year ahead we will begin to see a more robust emergence of specialized, domain-specific AI models. There will be a shift towards smaller, specialized LLMs that offer higher levels of accuracy, relevancy, precision, and efficiency for individual organizations and needs, along with niche domain understanding.

RAG and specialized LLMs and LMMs complement each other. RAG ensures accuracy and context, while smaller LLMs optimize efficiency and domain-specific performance. Still in the year ahead, LAM development and relevance will grow, focusing on the automation of user workflows while aiming to cover the “actions” aspect missing from LLMs.

The next frontier of GenAI will see evolutionary change and totally new aspects in B2B solutions.  Reshaping business processes, user experience, observability, security, and automated actions, this new AI-driven era is shaping itself up as we speak and 2024 will be an inflection point in that process.   Exciting times!

With AI as both catalyst and canvas for innovation, this is one of a series of blogs exploring Cisco EVP, Chief Strategy Officer, and GM of Applications Liz Centoni’s tech predictions for 2024. Her complete tech trend predictions can be found in The Year of AI Readiness, Adoption and Tech Integration ebook.

Catch the other blogs in the 2024 Tech Trends series

"}]]  As Generative AI (GenAI) expands in the business sphere, human-like interaction with B2B solutions, bespoke multimodal LLMs for better accuracy and precision, curated workflow automation and customized B2B applications will become the norm.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a common buzzword, especially with the rise of Generative AI (GenAI) tools like ChatGPT, which can create entirely new data and human-like content. However, AI… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a common buzzword, especially with the rise of Generative AI (GenAI) tools like ChatGPT, which can create entirely new data and human-like content. However, AI technology is nothing new. At Cisco Learning & Certifications, we have been providing training on predictive AI technology for years. Yet, in the short time since it came on the scene, GenAI (with its millions of practical use cases) has significantly accelerated adoption, increased data flows across devices, and increased the workload demands on networks.

Today, companies need powerful, flexible networks that can scale to the demands of GenAI. Realizing the full potential of AI across networks, however, requires a people-first mindset that empowers the individuals building and using this technology to drive better business outcomes.

At its best, AI is an effective partnership between humans and machines, underscoring the need for companies to find the right talent for their IT investments. With many companies already embarking on this journey, AI skills are in high demand. In fact, an Upwork survey found that GenAI job posts on the platform were up more than 1,000%, and GenAI-related job searches were up more than 1,500% in the second quarter of 2023.

A strong foundational understanding of technology and managing networks is the first and most important step to learning the skills needed for AI. As a learning organization, we are focused on equipping our community of learners with the expertise needed to tackle the challenges of today and in the future. IT professionals must be agile, as technological expertise is no longer static — it is moving just as fast as technology is changing. The skills needed for tomorrow may not be what an individual has today, so we must continue to build upon one’s foundational knowledge of technology and continue to evolve for an ever-changing technological landscape.

With many companies ramping up investments in GenAI-powered applications to boost productivity and realize rapid returns, they will need qualified talent for the new roles this technology is creating. We look at this challenge from the lens of the IT professional:

How do I start to familiarize myself with AI?
What are the skills needed for AIOps and what do I need to learn?
How do I design, operate, and deploy AI-ready networks with Cisco technology?

That’s why Cisco Learning & Certifications has released two tutorials for IT professionals who are interested in learning more about how GenAI can shape network engineering and operations:

Tutorial #1: Create a ChatGPT Client with Python: In this beginner tutorial, learners can create their very own chatbot with AI. They will be introduced to the basics of AI, Python, ChatGPT, and prompt engineering.
Tutorial #2: Chatting with Cisco IOS XE: In this intermediate tutorial, learners will be introduced to a variety of modern AI developer tools, including Cisco pyATS, ChatGPT, Langchain, ChromaDB, and Streamlit.

Along with these fundamental tutorials, Cisco U. offers courses and learning paths that provide a personalized learning approach to building the expertise needed for AI and other technology challenges:

Foundations of Generative AI
Ethical and Privacy Concerns with Generative AI
Catalyst Center Assurance
ThousandEyes Internet Insights
Meraki Insight
Cisco Enterprise Network Assurance (ENNA) Specialist Certification

As network demands and complexity increase, you need continuous skills learning to leverage the power of new, disruptive technologies, like AI. The gold standard in IT training, Cisco Learning & Certifications, is empowering organizations and individuals to meet new talent demands head-on. We offer a dynamic and collaborative learning environment for ongoing learning, personalized technical training and certifications, and a vibrant global community of network professionals to get the most out of the latest technological advancements, maximize IT investments, and thrive in the digital economy of the future.

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Game on: Level up your AI knowledge with Cisco U.

"}]]  Cisco Learning & Certifications provides continuous upskilling opportunities as organizations look to AI’s transformative capabilities for a more productive and growth-enabled future. Get started on new learning opportunities today.  Read More Cisco Blogs