How Cisco Protects AI Agents From the World of Cyber Threats

As AI agents become a more central part of the enterprise workforce, a new system of command and control is necessary. 

Appealing to this market-wide sentiment, tech giant Cisco has launched Cloud Control, a new unified platform designed to help organisations manage and protect critical IT infrastructure in an increasingly AI-driven world. 

Unveiled at Cisco Live US 2026 in Las Vegas, the platform forms the foundation of Cisco's AgenticOps vision, enabling human operators and AI agents to work together from a single environment. 

Cloud Control provides a consolidated view of networking, security, compute, observability and collaboration, all through a single environment. 

Built around a shared data layer, the platform allows people and AI agents to operate with the same information and context while ensuring that humans remain in control of decision-making.

“AI agents reason and act continuously at software speed and that changes everything about how we scale, manage and defend our critical infrastructure,” says Jeetu Patel, President and Chief Product Officer, Cisco. 

“Cisco Cloud Control is a command centre for agentic AI: a platform where your team and your AI agents work together, in the same environment, with the same information and with humans in control.”

The platform also enables customers to build their own applications and AI agents using natural language and integrates with a broad ecosystem of third-party platforms including AWS, Microsoft, Google Cloud, ServiceNow and Slack.

New tools to drive automation 

Cisco Cloud Control introduces a range of capabilities designed to simplify operations and accelerate problem resolution. 

Blending cross-domain telemetry with purpose-built AI models, such as Cisco's Deep Network Model, the platform delivers intelligence that can help organisations manage modern increasingly complex environments.

The new Cisco AI Canvas is the next step in human-machine collaboration, with a multiplayer, generative workspace that enables people and AI agents to investigate and resolve issues together using live operational data. 

Also unveiled was Cloud Control Studio, a design space with two customisations environments – an Agent Builder and an App Builder. 

Agent builder offers the flexibility that allows organisations to build customised agents tailored to their own in-house workflows and policies.

Thus creating, powerful, trusted AI agents that can identify issues, determine root causes, test potential fixes and verify outcomes, helping teams automate routine operational tasks while maintaining visibility and governance.

Expanding cybersecurity protection 

There were also a share of security innovations announced at Cisco Live to respond faster to modern cyber threats like those originating from frontier AI. 

Cisco is a charter member of both Anthropic’s Project Glasswing and OpenAI’s Daybreak, which means the company now stress-tests its products against the most advanced vulnerability discovery systems in the industry. 

A key development announced is the expansion of Live Protect, which the company calls a “digital immune system,” supporting Cisco products from vulnerabilities during runtime without reboots, upgrades or annoyingly long maintenance windows.

The capability is now available for N9000 series switches, with additional product support planned over the coming months.

Now the environment is secure, but what happens if something still goes wrong?

Helping in this mission is Cisco’s Hybrid Mesh Firewall that can contain the blast radius. The protection spreads across networks, applications and both Cisco and third-party firewalls.

Building resilience against quantum threats 

Beyond current cybersecurity challenges, Cisco is also investing in long-term resilience through new quantum-safe initiatives and services.

“Harvest now, decrypt later” attacks are already underway, as bad actors salvage encrypted data, waiting to be decrypted and useful as quantum capabilities proliferate.

To address this risk, Cisco plans to extend quantum-safe communications capabilities across most of its core portfolio by the end of 2026. 

The company has also introduced Quantum Ready Assessments through Cisco IQ, helping organisations identify vulnerable assets and prioritise next steps.

Alongside these developments, Cisco is launching Resilient Infrastructure Services and expanding Cisco IQ with AI-powered insights designed to help customers modernise infrastructure, reduce risk and strengthen their security posture in an increasingly complex digital landscape.