Versa delivers new AI-assisted enhancements across SASE, SD-WAN, SSE, ZTEA, and SD-LAN products

Versa Networks, the global pioneer in AI/ML powered Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) announced a set of enhancements to VersaAITM that includes new embedded generative AI capabilities to identify malicious behaviours in real-time, secure generative AI tools, and enhance network and security operational excellence.

These capabilities are powered by a shared set of fine-tuned AI/ML engines natively integrated into the Versa Unified SASE platform and used across its product portfolio. 

The need for AI in security and networking 

In the current business environment, networks and security are indispensable and intrinsically linked, but the infrastructure to deliver these services has grown in complexity and risk due to the rise of public cloud, SaaS applications, and the need to integrate point products. Security and networking teams are faced with a constant barrage of threats and outages.

They are overwhelmed by massive volumes of telemetry data from point products, limited budgets

These events are tremendously expensive, the cost per breach is over $4M, the cost per network outage is up to $300K per hour, and the cost to the brand is immeasurable.

CISOs, CIOs, and their understaffed teams struggle with these challenges while they are overwhelmed by massive volumes of telemetry data from point products, limited budgets, and legacy processes that can’t scale necessitating AI’s intervention to level the playing field. 

A comprehensive set of threat, data protection

Against this backdrop, VersaAITM has been delivering a set of advanced capabilities to simplify the management and monitoring of complex networks while securing the infrastructure.

With VersaAITM, customers access a comprehensive set of threat protection, data protection, and operational capabilities across the Versa product portfolio.

The integration of these advanced AI technologies into the Versa Unified SASE platform has revolutionised security and networking and delivers unparalleled protection and operational innovation for Versa’s customers.

Telemetry data is key to AI success 

VersaAITM taps into this data lake to extract AI/ML insights that are seamlessly applied across

The Versa Unified SASE Platform integrates a panoramic data set from across the entire infrastructure from the WAN Edge, Cloud, Campus, remote locations, users, and devices into a unified data lake.

VersaAITM taps into this data lake to extract AI/ML insights that are seamlessly applied across the Versa product suite. 

Accuracy and automation

“Our advantage lies in our unparalleled ability to train and correlate data across extensive unified security and networking telemetry,” said Kumar Mehta, Founder, and Chief Development Officer of Versa Networks.

Kumar Mehta adds, “With our vast SASE deployment base, the telemetry data is leveraged to fine-tune Large Language Models (LLMs) to bolster security posture in real-time with a high degree of accuracy and automation, and optimise network operations and performance.” 

What’s new in VersaAITM 

VersaAITM introduces several exciting new capabilities supporting advanced security and networking use cases: 

VersaAITM for Security 

Built on the current UEBA and AIOps modules that identify threats and anomalous behaviours while delivering actionable insights for accelerated remediation, the new capabilities include:

• AI/ML-Enhanced Malware Detection for Advanced Threat Protection: This new capability deploys multi-stage AI/ML for real-time pre-processing of files and code snippets to identify malware. With early adopters, this technique has already proven effective in eliminating zero-day attacks covering 90% of common file types while reducing the load on sandboxes by 75%.
• AI-powered Adaptive Microsegmentation: Organisations can enforce tailored Zero Trust conditional access controls for users, IT/OT devices, and resources. They can continuously assess user behaviour using AI/ML-based UEBA and device posture while isolating potential threats into microsegments in real time. Potential threats are identified closest to the host, limiting the blast radius for a possible attack within the enterprise perimeter. 
• Generative AI Security: This capability delivers granular, policy-based controls for Generative AI tools (e.g. ChatGPT) to help enterprises protect against unauthorised access and action.
• AI-Assisted DLP (Limited Access): This capability enhances pattern-recognition DLP with context-based analysis by fine-tuned LLMs to identify sensitive data. This protects enterprises from data leakage of company proprietary information, including source code and personally identifiable information within prompt windows, documents, and images.

VersaAITM for Networking

Built on Verbo, an NLP-based chatbot, and VANI, a specialised machine learning core for detecting and predicting anomalies, VersaAI for Networking delivers AI-assisted features that have automated troubleshooting, optimised operations, reduced network downtime, and improved predictability. New capabilities include: 

• VersaGPT: Eases daily operations with generative AI-powered access to Versa documentation and knowledge base. This improves enterprise productivity through a guided experience and access to how-to guides, configuration information, recommendations, and the sources from which the information is derived.
• AI-Informed Predictive Traffic Steering: With this enhancement to VANI’s fine-tuned predictive networking engine, security and networking teams can pre-emptively adjust traffic paths in real time to avoid degradation or reachability issues, and to seamlessly maintain application and network SLAs. This lessens the need for expensive digital experience tools that are necessary with other competitive solutions.

“We’re extremely excited about the potential these new capabilities unlock,” Mehta shared. “At Versa, we are committed to continuous innovation to help our customers by harnessing the potential of AI to deliver business outcomes.”