The world of network security is being greatly impacted by artificial intelligence, the rise of the data lake and the ramifications of a pandemic that forced companies to adopt a remote work model. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. recently acquired Juniper Networks to meet this tough transition in cybersecurity, with an emphasis on deploying AI.

HPE’s John Spiegel talks about the evolution of network security.

“It’s a tough life to be a CISA right now … our thesis is that it’s really about AI. It’s really about taking the things that we can do as HPE Aruba Networking, leverage our network background, the switches we have, the APs we have, the intelligence that we have put into these devices,” said John Spiegel (pictured), SASE field chief technology officer at HPE. “How do we leverage those and take the telemetry from those devices, put it into our central platform, and then start to provide insights, recommendations, understand what the device does, what is its meaning, what is its purpose, what’s the why behind it, and then start to apply policy or at least recommend policy based on that?”

Spiegel spoke with theCUBE Research’s John Furrier at the Black Hat USA event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how AI is changing cybersecurity and network architecture.

Transforming network security with AI

The cybersecurity space is experiencing a workforce shortage due to the rise of AI and the expansion of the Internet of Things. This IoT network encompasses connections between devices embedded in everyday objects and the cloud.

“We’re seeing a proliferation of devices. And it’s not just within the factories or manufacturing, it’s actually in the office itself … that is one of the biggest challenges right now in my mind,” Spiegel. “We can start to leverage AI to target, understand, profile these devices but then make sense of it. The humans have a hard time at scale, and I think that’s really where the opportunity is.”

Since the pandemic, many workers have continued to stay remote, prompting a shift in network security. Team members have to be protected on their devices and when they visit a campus, but figuring out how to construct a network that is fully secured is a complex task.

“Network’s all about optimizing, making things faster, moving those packets as quickly as possible from point A to point. B. Security, on the other hand, is all about looking at it, inspecting it, understanding the risk … you got to really kind of bring them together,” Spiegel said. “And inserting what I call legacy devices inside there that basically inspect them all the time, I think is the wrong approach. We got to work together. And that’s really where we feel there’s an opportunity and an advantage to leverage tools like AI.”

HPE has developed a Network Detection Response technology that uses telemetry from its network’s data lake to train AI models for securing edge devices. This innovation enhances coverage across a campus and its branches.

“There’s a huge opportunity right now to rethink the network from a data center layer perspective. You need low latency, you need non-blocking to make AI successful, and then you start to see what happens next. The AI co-pilots are now moving over to laptops and those PC devices,” he said. “Then tying it together with a centralized control mechanism like we have with HPE Aruba Networking. And it also starts to address some of the challenges with the workforce.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of the Black Hat USA event:

Photo: SiliconANGLE