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Thirty years ago, a Cisco customer service representative named Greg Akers picked up the phone to help a customer whose router was behaving strangely. Nobody knew it then, but he was fielding what would become one of the first cybersecurity service calls in the history of the commercial internet. At the time, Cisco had been building internet infrastructure for a decade. We didn\u2019t have a security team. We didn\u2019t have a security process. Cybersecurity did not really exist \u2026 yet. We couldn\u2019t have predicted the scale or sophistication of the attacks that are now routine. We were focused on building something the world had never seen, and the people trying to break it hadn\u2019t caught up yet.<\/p>\n
That gap between what we build and what we can defend is not new, and it is not evidence of recklessness. It\u2019s evidence of novelty. There is no playbook. If innovators only built within the limits of what they could already secure, they wouldn\u2019t be innovating at all; they\u2019d be maintaining. Safety has always trailed inventions, from the light bulb to the automobile to the internet itself. The question was never whether the gap would appear. It was how fast we\u2019d close it, and what we\u2019d learn along the way.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s Software, Not a New Species\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\nLately, I hear a lot of fear about artificial intelligence or super intelligence, fear that we\u2019ve unleashed something categorically new and uncontrollable. I understand the anxiety, but I\u2019d look to history to offer people a more pragmatic view to consider. AI is not a new species; it is software. Powerful, fast-moving, occasionally unpredictable software, but software nonetheless, and we have done this before. We learned to secure the mainframe, the client-server era, broadband, and the cloud \u2014 not completely, and not all at once \u2014 but well enough to unlock enormous economic growth and real benefits for billions of people. We will learn to secure this well enough, too. Not because it will be easy, but because we have thirty years of hard-won muscle memory as an industry for exactly this kind of problem.<\/p>\n
That said, I want to be careful not to sound cavalier, because there are no victory laps in security. It is a fixed answer to a question that keeps changing. A system that is secure today can be vulnerable tomorrow, not because anyone made a mistake, but because the people on the other side are also innovating. And with AI, that adversary isn\u2019t always a person outside. Sometimes, it\u2019s the system itself, behaving in ways we didn\u2019t intend or fully anticipate. That is a meaningfully different problem, and it deserves its own rigor, not just the old playbook.<\/p>\n
Lessons from the Aviation Industry<\/h2>\n
The uncomfortable truth about security is that it is fundamentally humbling. That is true for every industry, every company size, and every security team. Commercial aviation is a prime example of where innovation and security must align. While commercial aviation is remarkably safe, the industry treats safety as a commitment that never really ends. We didn\u2019t always have the systems we rely on today; we reached those current standards by realizing, at a significant investment of time and resources, that safety could not rely on individual expertise alone. It had to be engineered as a system. Modern air travel\u2019s reliability stems not from human infallibility, but from that deliberate, systemic design.<\/p>\n
If a plane fails a preflight check, it doesn\u2019t fly, no matter how well it flew yesterday. And if an airline introduces an entirely new aircraft, they don\u2019t immediately put passengers on it \u2014 they fly it in unpopulated airspace, wired with sensors and watched closely, so they can learn what they don\u2019t know yet, before anyone\u2019s safety depends on the answer. The extraordinary technology in the cockpit is never trusted alone. Air traffic control watches every aircraft from the ground, independent of what the pilot sees on their own instruments, and it says something when a plane drifts out of its lane. Investigators comb through every accident, near miss, and mechanical failure, and those findings become rules that apply industry-wide, not just to one airline. No single airline grades its own homework.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the model I\u2019d like to see built around AI. The best technology companies can create, paired with independent monitoring (not just of model builders, but AI in operations), transparent investigation of failures, and rules that apply across the industry rather than varying company to company. That\u2019s not a brake on innovation. It\u2019s the reason people are willing to get on a plane at all \u2014 and trust a system they don\u2019t fully control.<\/p>\n
The Culture We Need Now<\/h2>\n
Every serious security practitioner I know carries a version of that humility \u2014 the quiet knowledge that your best work is invisible by design, and the one day it isn\u2019t, everyone will see it. The right response to someone else\u2019s breach is not to throw rocks. It\u2019s to recognize that the same match is being played against you, right now, and to help where you can. This is the fight our industry shows up for every single day, and it is a fight we do not always win.<\/p>\n
That means being honest about where we fall short. Like many technology companies, we regularly disclose when our own products have active vulnerabilities being exploited in the wild. I firmly believe that transparency is how the industry gets better. But we also must be disciplined and balance our duty to share critical lessons with the reality that, in the wrong hands, too much detail too soon acts as a roadmap for an adversary. It\u2019s about enough precision to drive security, without handing a weapon to those trying to break in. I\u2019d also caution against a culture where the loudest voices are the ones trying to prove a company or a model is foolish. That dynamic doesn\u2019t make anyone safer. It just makes people quieter about their problems, which is the opposite of what we need. Transparency requires trust that disclosure won\u2019t be weaponized.<\/p>\n
So, what do we do with that humility? We can\u2019t predict exactly where AI will create risk next \u2014 anyone who tells you they can is selling something. What we can do is apply the same layered-system thinking that transformed aviation into one of the safest human ways to travel.<\/p>\n
Regulators and governments have an important role here, the same role air traffic control plays \u2014 not flying the plane, but watching the whole sky, and speaking up the moment something drifts out of line.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s Next?\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\nWe must put ourselves in the best possible position, using what we know today, and adjust as we learn tomorrow. AI moves at a pace we\u2019ve never seen before, and that demands intention, strategy and thoughtfulness working together in equal measure. It also requires an honest look at how other industries have tackled this exact puzzle before.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t say any of this from outside the fray. Cisco has spent thirty years being the company in the room when things go sideways on the internet, and we\u2019ll spend the next thirty helping figure out how to secure whatever AI becomes. I\u2019m an optimist about where this goes. I also know, from three decades of experience, that optimism and vigilance were never in conflict. They\u2019re the same job.<\/p>\n
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We must put ourselves in the best possible position, using what we know today, and adjust as we learn tomorrow. AI moves at a pace we\u2019ve never seen before, and that demands intention, strategy and thoughtfulness working together in equal measure. It also requires an honest look at how other industries have tackled this exact puzzle before.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t say any of this from outside the fray. Cisco has spent thirty years being the company in the room when things go sideways on the internet, and we\u2019ll spend the next thirty helping figure out how to secure whatever AI becomes. I\u2019m an optimist about where this goes. I also know, from three decades of experience, that optimism and vigilance were never in conflict. They\u2019re the same job.<\/p>\n
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