Cisco Unveils AI-Powered Identity Security with Cisco Identity Intelligence in the Middle East
Cisco has achieved a major milestone in its cybersecurity journey by transforming Cisco Identity Intelligence into the first product in the company’s portfolio entirely powered by an internally developed AI model. This comes amid rapid digital transformation and government digital initiatives in the Middle East, highlighting the critical role of identity security in fostering trust and digital resilience.
Enhanced Identity Security with Deeper Insights
Cisco Identity Intelligence enables organizations to detect and manage identity-related risks across diverse digital environments. The system provides a comprehensive and precise view of users’ identities, login locations, and devices through continuous monitoring of identity activities.
By leveraging post-authentication signals, the system identifies suspicious patterns and behaviors often missed by traditional security tools, such as unusual login attempts, privilege misuse, multi-factor authentication fatigue indicators, or session hijacking. This allows cybersecurity teams to act proactively before threats escalate—a crucial capability amid rising identity-based attacks.
The platform sends a weekly email summary to relevant administrators, offering actionable insights into the latest identity risk trends, anomalies, and areas for improvement. Over 2,000 clients rely on this summary weekly.
Cisco Identity Intelligence uses the Cisco Foundation AI model, specifically designed for identity and security use cases, ensuring more accurate and workflow-aligned insights without relying on external general AI models.
Fadi Younes, General Manager of Cybersecurity at Cisco for the Middle East, Africa, Turkey, Romania, and the CIS, stated:
"Security teams don’t need more noise—they need clearer, actionable signals. By deploying an internally developed AI model, we provide precise insights into identity risks, enabling teams to respond faster and with greater confidence. This is especially important as organizations in the region expand cloud and digital adoption while maintaining high levels of trust and resilience."
Customer Impact
Clients will not need to change their current usage of the product. However, the weekly summary will now offer clearer, more consistent insights, with improved prioritization and practical recommendations, enabling faster and more confident security decisions.
Significance of Cisco’s AI Security Model
The Foundation Sec-1.1-8B Instruct model is specifically trained on cybersecurity and identity scenarios, ensuring outputs align with risk assessment methodologies used by security operations analysts and identity officers. Internal development also provides higher quality control and compliance support, aligning with regional priorities in data governance, digital sovereignty, and protection of critical sectors including government, financial services, and energy across the Middle East.