Latest news with #WillTownsend
Forbes
07-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
RSA Conference 2025 Highlights, Insights And Companies To Watch
Palo Alto Networks livestream event at RSA Conference 2025 Will Townsend In my opinion, RSA Conference is becoming a showcase for the application of modern AI within cybersecurity. Last year, the resounding theme for the event was generative AI. It came as no surprise, then, that this year's event focused on agentic AI. In this RSAC wrap-up, I will provide my thoughts on both the transformative power and the challenges of employing agentic AI within cybersecurity protection suites. I will also highlight a handful of announcements that I found noteworthy and share Six Five Media video conversations I had with Cisco and Cohesity that explore several important topics related to modern AI. Let's get started. Many pundits, including myself, speak to the dichotomy of security for AI and AI for security. In other words, there is both a need for securing the use of AI applications and workloads, and a need for leveraging the power of AI to reduce analyst friction and fortify cyber defenses. Given RSAC's heavy focus this year on agentic AI and its potential impact to fortify cybersecurity, two things are very apparent to me. First, the solution providers that avoid AI hype, carefully listen to customer needs and educate in the short term stand to benefit as trusted advisors — and reap commercial rewards in the longer term. Second, a radical evolution in identity access management will be required to manage the permissions, delegation and hierarchy of agents and super-agents. First movers that crack the code for that complexity stand to benefit immensely. The speed at which modern AI applications are moving is exciting to watch, and there is great potential to tip the scales toward defenders. AI is decidedly a double-edged sword, but agentic AI plus automation has great promise to combat the current use of generative AI by bad actors who use it to dramatically improve phishing and lateral movement schemes. As in years past, RSAC 2025 served as a stage for many cybersecurity infrastructure provider announcements. Four stood out as noteworthy for me: Cisco — Cisco announced new functionality tied to its XDR platform, including instant attack verification, improved forensics and a storyboard feature that more clearly visualizes complex attack chains. I like the maturity of the company's endpoint protection suite, and I think that the additional enhancements for supply chain and industrial IoT threat defense have great promise. Furthermore, from my perspective, Cisco's acquisition of Robust Intelligence may be one of its best buys in recent years. It provides the automated red-teaming capability in the company's AI Defense platform , and it supports the newly launched Foundation AI open-source reasoning model that is purpose-built for enhancing security applications. Hewlett Packard Enterprise — HPE announced enhanced network access control features, an OpsRamp integration for more granular network observability and new SSE mesh connectivity — all designed to improve reliability, ensure resiliency and harden security. I like the deeper level of automation and dynamic routing capabilities that are designed to ease both network and security operations. However, there is an opportunity for HPE to use its HP Labs research team to dive deeper into security, providing threat intelligence research like Cisco Talos. Microsoft — On the Sunday before RSAC's official opening, I attended Microsoft's pre-day for a second year, plus I met with executive management during the event. I continue to be impressed with the company's continued focus on its Secure Future Initiative . Microsoft claims that it now employs over 34,000 engineers engaged in cybersecurity application refinement and innovation. That level of technical resource dedication is mind-blowing and speaks to the company's commitment to security. In talking with a handful of smaller security solution providers, I also learned that Microsoft Defender is benefiting from the company's security focus, making significant gains in its ability to provide AI workload alerting, endpoint protection and cyber remediation. Palo Alto Networks — Palo Alto Networks' activity at RSAC was significant. This included its announced intent to acquire Protect AI to further its modern AI security ambitions, as well as enhancements to its AI Cortex exposure management and email security. The company has also seen growing adoption of its secure enterprise browser, which provides layered protection. My conversations with executive management also made it clear that Prisma AIRS is one of the most anticipated cybersecurity solution suites in the company's history; it includes model scanning, posture management, AI red-teaming, runtime security and agent security. I can understand Palo Alto Networks' enthusiasm, because I believe the company has one of the broadest and deepest AI security suites. Deep-Dive Conversations With Cisco And Cohesity At RSAC this year, I had the opportunity to conduct Six Five Media video interviews with Cisco and Cohesity. The first was with Cisco's Tom Gillis , who leads the company's datacenter infrastructure and security businesses. We discussed the company's announcements at RSAC as well as Gillis's vision for the integration of agentic AI and its potential impact for driving improved security outcomes. The second interview was with Vasu Murthy , who leads all of product development for Cohesity. We discussed the company's new RecoveryAgent, which is infused with intellectual property from its Veritas acquisition, along with Murthy's longer-term vision for the product portfolio, as well as how Cohesity protects 100-plus exabytes of enterprise data globally using a zero-trust security architecture, enhanced multi-factor authentication, ML-based ransomware detection and more. Companies To Watch At RSAC, I also had the opportunity to spend time with a handful of companies for the first time, including Forescout, InfoSec Global and Swissbit. Forescout provides cyber risk, compliance and threat mitigation capabilities, enabled through asset intelligence, continuous assessment and ongoing control across IT and OT environments. I like it that the company employs an open platform that integrates with more than 100 security and IT products. Forescout Research – Vedere Labs also provides deep device intelligence and curates both its unique telemetry and other threat intelligence feeds to enrich its platform. As a pioneer and leader in cryptographic posture management, InfoSec Global aims to secure enterprise digital infrastructure by enabling organizations to discover, inventory, remediate and manage cryptographic assets. Its AgileSec platform orchestrates agile cryptography management through centralized policy enforcement across cloud and on-premises environments — even during the transition from traditional to post-quantum cryptography. The company told me that global financial institutions, large technology companies and government agencies rely on its own capabilities and integrations with third parties to ensure compliance, strengthen resilience and achieve post-quantum readiness. Crypto posture management is somewhat nascent, but the future risks that are associated with breaking encryption using quantum computing certainly warrant closer scrutiny. Swissbit is a security solution provider that combines its strengths in flash memory and embedded IoT device design to enable digital identity authentication and physical access control. The Swissbit iShield Key provides these capabilities in a simple and flexible USB key form factor that actively protects users from online attacks, such as phishing, social engineering and account takeover. Its latest product iteration, iShield Key 2, is the first FIDO security key to be FIPS 140-3 Level 3 certified, ensuring hardened security for demanding applications. I like its flexibility, akin to a Swiss Army knife (pun intended) to address a host of use cases including badge access, device authentication and more. The Power Of The Platform In the bigger picture, cybersecurity solution providers are doubling down on the power of the platform to deliver ease of management and hardened security. Tool sprawl is untenable, especially as bad actors weaponize the use of generative and eventually agentic AI to attack organizations. Platform approaches can go far to deliver higher levels of value and improved protection through a suite of solutions that work better together. From my perspective, RSAC 2025 did a lot to demonstrate the value of security platforms, and although the hype cycle is now squarely focused on agentic AI, it does have great long-term promise. Moor Insights & Strategy provides or has provided paid services to technology companies, like all tech industry research and analyst firms. These services include research, analysis, advising, consulting, benchmarking, acquisition matchmaking and video and speaking sponsorships. Of the companies mentioned in this article, Moor Insights & Strategy currently has (or has had) a paid business relationship with Cisco, Cohesity, HPE, Microsoft and Palo Alto Networks.
Forbes
31-03-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Next-Gen 5G Modems From MediaTek And Qualcomm Debut At MWC 2025
MediaTek's and Qualcomm's new 5G modems Each spring, Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is the place where the entire mobile ecosystem shows off the best of what it has to offer for the year. Following Apple's announcement of its C1 modem inside the iPhone 16e (which I covered in an earlier article), there was inevitably going to be a response from the two biggest providers of 5G modems, MediaTek and Qualcomm. Both companies have been shipping 5G modems across multiple generations for years. Both companies are also pushing the limits of 5G connectivity by using AI, incorporating satellite functionality and breaking the 10 Gbps barrier. While MediaTek and Qualcomm are pushing 5G connectivity forward with the new modems they launched at MWC, they are also prioritizing different aspects of 5G Advanced (3GPP Rel. 18) that could help the eventual transition to 6G. Let's dive into the details of these two new modem chips. (Disclosure: Like many other semiconductor makers, MediaTek and Qualcomm are both clients of my firm, Moor Insights & Strategy.) MediaTek's M90 modem was the first to be announced, just ahead of MWC 2025 in Barcelona. The M90 is MediaTek's 3GPP Rel. 17 modem, which the company says also conforms to the upcoming R18 5G-Advanced spec. MediaTek has given the M90 a peak throughput of 12 Gbps, which is a significant improvement over its M80 predecessor, which had a 7 Gbps downlink. MediaTek has also upped the ante by increasing carrier aggregation in sub-6-gigahertz bands from four carriers in the M80 to six carriers in the M90. The M90 also enhances uplink performance by 20% over the M80 by utilizing advanced transmit switching. With this device, MediaTek is also focused on the future with support for both 3GPP NTN and IoT-NR standards, which were introduced in 3GPP Rel. 17. This gives the modem satellite connectivity, which MediaTek previously enabled via a standalone NTN-IoT chip that had to sit alongside a 5G modem chip or operate entirely on its own. I believe that MediaTek's integration of NTN satellite connectivity will help to drive the industry forward; in time, it will be expected of both carriers and OEMs that these capabilities will be integrated at little to no additional cost. (For more context on satellite connectivity, see my 'State of 5G' roundup from last month, my recent article on the T-Mobile/SpaceX partnership and my colleague Will Townsend's recap of interesting telecom developments at MWC.) The M90 also features MediaTek's second-generation AI for modems, a.k.a. MediaTek Modem AI 2.0, which the company says recognizes usage patterns and network environments to optimize connectivity and maximize performance. According to MediaTek, Modem AI 2.0 can also detect device orientation and usage scenarios to maximize connectivity performance in different environments. MediaTek says that its Smart Antenna technology can also identify an operating environment and boost throughput by as much as 30% through optimizations. Mediatek's focus on power efficiency was also evident with the M90 modem as the company introduced its UltraSave 4.0 solution for 5G power savings. MediaTek claims that UltraSave 4.0 reduces average power usage by 18% compared to the M80. Additionally, MediaTek says it is implementing a 3GPP Rel. 17 feature called Paging Early Indication to reduce idle power by 15% over the M80. This means that the M90 is a significantly faster modem than the M80, yet also has considerably lower active and idle power usage. During MWC 2025, MediaTek announced that it had successfully validated performance for the M90 with Keysight using an emulator in a lab. While this isn't necessarily relevant to the consumer experience, it does reinforce that MediaTek's modems are indeed as quick as claimed. The company seems to be targeting mobile, customer premises equipment, IoT and automotive applications with the M90; I expect that it won't be long until we see a T900-series platform for FWA and CPE applications like we have with the M70 and M80. The T-series is a full RF-SoC platform that MediaTek has created for faster and easier integration into hotspot and FWA CPE solutions. MediaTek has done exceptionally well in the 5G FWA realm, taking advantage of the first 5G killer app with fixed wireless broadband. The company also has the M60 modem, which it announced in 2023, specifically designed for 5G RedCap solutions, predominantly for IoT applications due to its low cost and lower throughput. The M60 powers the company's T300 RF-SoC for RedCap, which is much more cost-effective than something like an M90 for IoT applications, but is still 3GPP Rel. 17-compatible, which is necessary to support RedCap. Many consumers won't notice anything different about the Qualcomm X85, but those who have been following Qualcomm for a while will notice the missing Snapdragon branding. That's because the introduction of Qualcomm's Dragonwing brand has led the company to reorganize its branding. Now, products like modems, CPU cores and GPU cores that bridge multiple markets and functions will carry only Qualcomm branding; the Snapdragon and Dragonwing brands will be used for more vertical-specific applications. (This is explained in more detail in Patrick Moorhead's high-level assessment of Qualcomm's announcements at MWC.) Branding aside, the Snapdragon X85 is the latest of the company's dozen-plus different 5G modems released since 2018. While Qualcomm's modem generations are sometimes hard to nail down, the company has released at least one new 5G modem each year during that time. Qualcomm says that the X85 is its eighth-generation 5G modem-to-antenna solution and its fourth generation of AI-powered 5G connectivity. Qualcomm's top-end modems have been capable of 10 Gbps per second peak speeds ever since the X65 in 2021, but with the X85, Qualcomm increases that to 12.5 Gbps to once again claim the fastest 5G modem crown. The X85 is designed to support 5G Advanced, 3GPP Rel.18 features and will once again primarily target Android smartphones, much like its predecessors. The AI tensor processor inside the X85 is 30% faster than the preceding generation at performing inference tasks, which now enhances performance, coverage, latency and power efficiency. Qualcomm also claims that the X85 is the first modem with 400-megahertz downlink carrier aggregation in the sub-6-gigahertz spectrum, as well as the first with uplink carrier aggregation (200 megahertz) with four layers. Like its competition, it also supports up to 6x carrier aggregation, which is how it can achieve the 400 megahertz of bandwidth. Qualcomm also supports switched uplink with Rel. 17 and supplemental uplink for China. The X85 also supports up to 3.7 Gbps of uplink throughput thanks to the 200-megahertz 4x Uplink CA. This means that Qualcomm's 5G modem continues to be the fastest in the land, with global band support for all bands ranging from 600 megahertz up to 41 gigahertz. Qualcomm says that this covers more than 10,000 different band configurations, which makes it one of the most capable modems on earth. Qualcomm has also integrated 5G NTN support into the X85, but the company had already integrated that functionality into its flagship modems since the X80 was announced last year. In addition to NTN support, there is also support for industrial IoT applications like 5G TSN (time-sensitive networking) and 5G Ethernet, which both seek to enable 5G for private industrial networks. These features should help Qualcomm and its partners leverage 5G in manufacturing and other industrial applications where Ethernet or wires can inhibit flexibility and production uptime. The company also touted another unique feature with support for the Future Railway Mobile Communication System, which is a new 5G standard specifically focused on supporting connectivity on European railways. (If you've ever experienced connectivity on trains, it's generally not very good, and moving quickly between cell sites can impact battery life.) This new system will replace the old GSM-R, which is an outdated 2G standard for railways; for comparison, GSM-R has a 9.6 Kbps bitrate, while FRMCS is capable of 100 Mbps. FRMCS also supports higher-speed trains up to 500 km/h, while GSM-R supports only up to 400 km/h. Qualcomm's target markets for the X85 modem are, unsurprisingly, smartphones, mobile broadband devices, FWA, industrial IoT and satellite communications. I would again expect that we will see the X85 first in some smartphones, quickly followed by 5G FWA, CPE, PCs and IoT applications. At MWC 2025, Qualcomm also announced the Dragonwing FWA Gen 4 Elite, which is powered by the Qualcomm X85 modem and a 40 TOPS NPU for 5G AI applications. Qualcomm also announced the X82 — a less expensive, featured-down modem — to accompany the X85 for more mainstream applications. Both modems are already sampling to customers, with commercially available devices expected in the second half of this year. While we are still quite a way away from a 6G standard, 5G Advanced (3GPP Rel. 18) is the first step in that direction. And although operators like China Mobile and T-Mobile are only beginning to talk about 5G Advanced networks, 5G Standalone networks are necessary to even start thinking about them. Leading global operators including Reliance Jio are already using 5G SA but will still need devices that use modems like the MediaTek M90 and the Qualcomm X85 to enable those capabilities. One other thing of note is that previous-generation modems also claimed to support 5G Advanced features, with that standard being frozen as of June 18, 2024. It will be interesting to see which of those devices get equipped with Rel. 18 features once 5G Advanced starts to be rolled out by operators.
