As a major step towards providing much-needed security solutions for firms to confidently adopt agentic AI, i.e., autonomous AI systems that act on behalf of users or humans, Cisco has unveiled an evolution of its overall security portfolio. The major expansion of its AI defense offering at the Cisco Live EMEA conference in Amsterdam highlights significant advancements such as AI Bill of Materials (AI BOM) for centralizing the governance of AI assets, MCP catalog for inventorying and managing supply chain risks of AI, algorithmic red teaming for broader security assessments using AI, and real-time guardrails to detect manipulation and unsafe user interactions with AI. Recognizing that conventional security tools struggle with the semantic complexity of agentic communication, Cisco also added industry-first AI-aware advancements to Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), including AI traffic optimization for reliable performance, MCP-level visibility and policy control, intent-aware inspection of agent actions, and unified policy enforcement across SD-WAN and secure service edge. To maintain performance and protect encrypted communications at scale, Cisco introduced IOS XE 26, powering new Secure Routers and Smart Switches with full-stack post-quantum cryptography (PQC), designed to align with evolving global regulatory guidance.
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“In the age of AI, safety and security are pre-requisites for adoption, and AI agents bring a whole new set of challenges,” said Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s President and Chief Product Officer. “As agents take on critical enterprise roles, we’re developing protections that work both ways: preventing agents from being compromised and controlling what they can access and do on our behalf.” Cisco’s announcements also include enhancements like Active Directory Defense via Cisco Duo to secure on-premises identity infrastructure, and new AgenticOps capabilities for Security Cloud Control to autonomously analyze and remediate security issues while maintaining compliance. With these innovations, Cisco aims to help organizations inventory and govern AI assets, manage risk across the AI lifecycle, and extend security, visibility, and automation from core data centers to branch and campus networks, enabling enterprises to innovate with agentic AI while balancing performance, safety, and operational simplicity.
