In an agentic AI world, organisations must act and defend at machine speed and scale. Cisco Cloud Control, unveiled at Cisco Live, is a unified platform built for humans and AI agents to manage, monitor and defend critical IT infrastructure — and the foundation for Cisco’s AgenticOps operating model.
With one login, Cisco Cloud Control delivers a single view of Cisco networking, security, compute, observability, and collaboration in one secure environment. People and agents work from a single data layer, sharing the same operational context and the same system of action, while humans stay in control. Customers can build their own applications and agents using natural language directly within the platform, which also connects to a large ecosystem, including AWS, Linear, ServiceNow, and Slack.
“AI agents reason and act continuously at software speed, and that changes everything about how we scale, manage, and defend our critical infrastructure”, said 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”.
One platform for humans and agents to run the agentic enterprise
Cisco Cloud Control is the single management plane that brings a customer’s entire estate into one environment — one login, one view.
- Cross-domain telemetry. The rich data flowing across networking, security, observability, collaboration, and more.
- Trusted agents. Through Cisco Cloud Control, operators will be able to work with autonomous agents that can follow a structured path from signal to action: spotting trouble, identifying causes, carrying out fixes, testing changes before deployment, and confirming the user experience has recovered. Teams will be able to automate network ops with an agentic loop, while keeping actions visible and governed.
- Cisco AI Canvas. A multiplayer, generative workspace where operators and agents work from the same live evidence to investigate and resolve complex issues together in real time.
- Cloud Control Studio. Agent Builder lets customers build agents for Cloud Control tailored to their own policies and workflows, with the ability to connect to more than 50+ third-party platforms and tools through native connectors or the open Model Context Protocol (MCP).
Cisco Cloud Control enters Controlled Availability in United States today, with Global Availability to follow.
Security for the Mythos era, fused directly into the infrastructure
Reactive defence is no longer enough when the window between vulnerability and exploit has collapsed from weeks to minutes.
Cisco is expanding protections across its infrastructure to shield customers from new vulnerabilities quickly following discovery — with Cisco Cloud Control as the security command centre where defence plays out in real time.
Always-on defence across the infrastructure
Live Protect acts as a digital immune system for Cisco products, shielding them from newly discovered and prioritized vulnerabilities for supported platforms at runtime — no reboots, no upgrades, no maintenance windows.
Now available in N9000 series switches and included with the Nexus One product entitlement, Live Protect is expanding to more products in the Cisco Portfolio in the coming months, starting with campus and branch smart switches, followed by secure routers later in the year.
Protecting agents from the world, and the world from agents
AI agents are joining the workforce, working alongside humans, and taking on tasks that require a secure environment. Cisco recently announced further enhancements across its agentic security offerings, from AI Defence, to Zero Trust for agents, to the Agentic SOC.
Clear path to quantum-safe infrastructure
“Harvest now, decrypt later” attacks are already happening, collecting encrypted data to unlock when quantum capabilities catch up. Cisco is turning tomorrow’s threat into a plan enterprises can start building today:
- New Quantum-safe communications advancements across Cisco’s core portfolio. With a commitment to enable quantum-safe communications capabilities across the majority of Cisco’s core portfolio by December 2026, Cisco is extending post-quantum protection to the systems where the most sensitive enterprise traffic flows.
- Quantum-safe by default for new infrastructure. Starting today and moving forward, any newly introduced campus, branch and data centre routers, switches, and firewall series will launch with quantum-safe secure boot. This builds on the same quantum-safe technology already shipping in campus smart switches.
- The new Quantum Ready Assessments, available through Cisco IQ, identify the assets most exposed to “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks — and where to start.
Global availability planned for July 2026.
Long-term resilience with Cisco
To help customers navigate this new era, Cisco Services is announcing new capabilities:
- Resilient Infrastructure Services, delivered through Cisco Support and Professional Services, is a new three-step approach — exposure assessment, infrastructure modernisation, Defence Resiliency — that helps customers mitigate risk from frontier model threats.
- Cisco IQ, fully integrated into Cisco Cloud Control, is Cisco’s AI-powered delivery vehicle for Support and Professional Services. It’s helping customers build the long-term resilience that today’s threat landscape demands with a Resilient Infrastructure Playbook, built with AI-driven insights and Zero Trust principles.
- Supporting customers with data sovereignty requirements, Cisco IQ will now support on-premises deployment options.
Global availability planned for July 2026.
Image Credit: Cisco
Source: Tahawul Tech