Cisco: 73% greater productivity, 5 hours saved per week per employee

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Cisco: 73% greater productivity, 5 hours saved per week per employee

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Cisco deployed an internal AI assistant accessible to every employee, addressing both opportunity and risk as AI tools like ChatGPT emerged in the marketplace. Key challenges were: security and compliance risks from employees inputting PII, client data, or proprietary information into AI engines; data privacy concerns about sensitive Cisco data being exposed to public training sets; and an AI skill gap between technical and non-technical employees. Cisco's AI Defense guardrails scan user prompts and MCP server tools for malicious code and hidden threats. Cisco's internal AI assistant has become the most widely used AI tool at Cisco, allowing employees to experience an average time savings of 5 hours per week and 73% greater productivity. The tool is designed with a security-first mindset, automatically detecting and redacting sensitive data before it is sent to a public AI model. Sujith Joseph, Principal Engineer at Cisco, said "Designed with a security-first mindset, our internal AI assistant has powerful guardrails that automatically detect and redact sensitive data before it's sent to a public AI model — giving our employees an intelligent partner they can trust." He also noted "Cisco's internal AI assistant is successfully taking on time-consuming, day-to-day tasks, freeing up our employees to be more strategic, creative, and responsive to our customers." A modular, flexible architecture and advanced data operations allow deployment of new features and consistent roadmap refinement.

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