{"id":144634,"date":"2025-11-20T11:45:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T11:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/144634\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T11:45:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T11:45:11","slug":"with-the-rise-of-ai-cisco-sounds-an-urgent-alarm-about-the-risks-of-aging-tech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/144634\/","title":{"rendered":"With the Rise of AI, Cisco Sounds an Urgent Alarm About the Risks of Aging Tech"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aging digital infrastructure equipment like routers<\/a>, network switches<\/a>, and network-attached storage\u2014has long posed a silent risk to organizations. In the short term, it’s cheaper and easier to just leave those boxes running in a forgotten closet. But this infrastructure may have old, insecure configurations, and legacy tech is often no longer supported by vendors for software patches and other protections. As generative AI platforms<\/a> make it easier for attackers to find<\/a> and exploit<\/a> vulnerabilities in targets’ systems, the network tech company Cisco is launching an effort to raise awareness about the issue and promote improvements\u2014both for ancient Cisco devices and products from other companies that are still in use.<\/p>\n

Dubbed \u201cResilient Infrastructure,\u201d the initiative<\/a> includes research and industry outreach as well as technical shifts in how Cisco manages its own legacy products. The company says that it is launching new warnings for its products that are approaching end of life, so if customers are running known insecure configurations or attempt to add them, they will receive a clear and explicit prompt when they update a device. Eventually, Cisco will go a step further to completely remove historic settings and interoperability options that are no longer considered safe.<\/p>\n

\u201cInfrastructure globally is aging, and that creates a ton of risk,\u201d says Anthony Grieco, Cisco\u2019s chief security and trust officer. \u201cThe thing we\u2019ve got to get across is this aging infrastructure wasn\u2019t designed for today\u2019s threat environments. And by not updating it, it’s fostering opportunities for adversaries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Research conducted for Cisco by the British advisory firm WPI Strategy looked at the prevalence and impact of end-of-life technology in the \u201ccritical national infrastructure\u201d of five countries: the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Japan. The study<\/a> found that the UK (followed closely by the US) faces the biggest relative risk of the group from widespread use of outmoded, legacy technology in key sectors. Japan had the lowest relative risk\u2014thanks, the report says, to more emphasis on consistent upgrades, decentralization in critical infrastructure, and \u201ca stronger, more consistent national focus on digital resilience.\u201d<\/p>\n

In general, the research also emphasizes that breaches and other cybersecurity incidents around the world regularly involve attackers exploiting known vulnerabilities that could be avoided through patching or upgrading end-of-life technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe status quo is not free\u2014there is actually a cost, it\u2019s just not being accounted for,\u201d says Eric Wenger, Cisco’s senior director for technology policy. \u201cIf we can help elevate this risk to something that is treated as a board-level concern, then hopefully that will help to underscore the importance of making an investment here.\u201d As an industry, he adds, \u201cwe\u2019re not making it hard enough for the attackers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aging digital infrastructure equipment like routers, network switches, and network-attached storage\u2014has long posed a silent risk to organizations.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,60129,1510,3105,46038,1702,359,111,139,69,2437,145,77487],"class_list":{"0":"post-144634","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-cisco","12":"tag-cybersecurity","13":"tag-data","14":"tag-enterprise","15":"tag-infrastructure","16":"tag-internet","17":"tag-new-zealand","18":"tag-newzealand","19":"tag-nz","20":"tag-security","21":"tag-technology","22":"tag-vulnerabilities"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}