Cisco takes aim at AI security at RSAC with ServiceNow partnership

Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and General Manager for Security and Collaboration at Cisco, pictured at Cisco Live 2024 in Las Vegas. — (Image credit: Cisco)

Cisco and ServiceNow have kicked off RSAC Conference 2025 in San Francisco by announcing a new aspect of their seven-year collaboration. It brings together the former’s AI Defense product with the latter’s SecOps, with the companies claiming the integration will provide “more holistic AI risk management and governance”.

Speaking ahead of the announcement, Cisco’s EVP and chief product officer Jeetu Patel told reporters: “We think the hardest thing in the history of security has been with AI – and the largest opportunity in the history of security has been with AI. And you will see as evidence of that right now is attackers are getting far more sophisticated.”

“We need to operate as an ecosystem and make sure that we’re leveraging each other’s strengths,” he added.

For mutual customers of Cisco and ServiceNow, this means an integration between Cisco AI Defense, which it launched in January 2025, and ServiceNow SecOps.

AI Defense will act as an enforcement layer, according to the companies, identifying threats and vulnerabilities specific to AI. SecOps, meanwhile, will bring workflows and automation to allow IT and security teams to respond to the potential issues surfaced by AI Defense.

Commenting on the partnership, Amit Zavery, chief product officer and chief operating officer at ServiceNow, said: “If customers are looking at ways Cisco is helping them and they want service now be part of that integrated solution, we wanted to make sure we do that properly and provide a much more seamless experience for our customers as well, so that we can solve the end to end problem instead of customers having to deal with all those things themselves.

“The work Cisco has been doing around AI security, as well as the broader security portfolio Cisco has, was very attractive to all of us here at ServiceNow, and we've been able to… work together to really create something unique for the customers.”

Patel, meanwhile, said that bringing the two services together “could have an exponential kind of return back to the customer”.

“Virtually every customer in the enterprise is a Cisco customer and a ServiceNow customer. So we already have the customers, they already had invested in both of us. They were interested in making sure that we could help them do a better job at harnessing the investment. So this seemed like a match made in heaven,” said Patel.

“We're going to be very methodical about getting something out, getting it validated in the market, making sure that there's success, and continue to keep innovating on it,” he added.

In terms of availability, organizations that are customers of both companies can expect to make use of this integration from the second half of 2025.

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Jane McCallion is Managing Editor of ITPro and ChannelPro, specializing in data centers, enterprise IT infrastructure, and cybersecurity. Before becoming Managing Editor, she held the role of Deputy Editor and, prior to that, Features Editor, managing a pool of freelance and internal writers, while continuing to specialize in enterprise IT infrastructure, and business strategy.

Prior to joining ITPro, Jane was a freelance business journalist writing as both Jane McCallion and Jane Bordenave for titles such as European CEO, World Finance, and Business Excellence Magazine.