Dive Brief:

• Cisco and IBM Security announced Wednesday plans to partner to help customers reduce the complexity of cybersecurity and offer integrated tools to help improve the speed and accuracy of threat response.
• Cisco security solutions will integrate with IBM’s QRadar to better protect organizations, while the IBM X-Force and Cisco Talos security research teams will begin collaborating on threat intelligence research and coordinating on major cybersecurity incidents, according to the announcement. 
• A recent Cisco survey of 3,000 chief security officers found 65% of their organizations use between six and 50 different security products. Through the new collaboration, IBM and Cisco will create new services aimed at decreasing that complexity.

Dive Insight:

Companies are spending more and more time and money on cybersecurity, yet not necessarily getting better results. Increasingly, companies are looking to outsource their security efforts to experts that can do the job better and often more cheaply. That’s where the new IBM/Cisco effort comes in.

At the same time, dealing with data breaches is not getting any cheaper. The average cost of recovery from a single security incident is estimated to be $86,500 for small and medium businesses and $861,000 for enterprises, according to a report released by Kaspersky Lab last fall.

IBM has a growing interest in applying AI for cybersecurity to help make threat hunting easier. In February, the company announced Watson for Cyber Security, which will leverage Watson’s AI capabilities to help companies improve cybersecurity efforts and make suggestions on the best response.