Cisco taps AI, partners to modernize IT operations and fortify network security
Network World · · g6173331
Cisco’s annual Partner Summit is underway in Vancouver, where the vendor unveiled features and capabilities directed at partners and end-user organizations. “IT teams must modernize their networks and rethink how they operate while keeping systems secure against fast-changing threats,” wrote Joe Vaccaro , senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s network platform and assurance, in a blog post about Cisco’s new AgenticOps and secure networking capabilities. “AI workloads are placing new demands on infrastructure, and agents are entering production workflows. At the same time, AI-discovered vulnerabilities are rapidly reshaping the threat landscape. The PHP2Shell disclosures are one recent example of this broader problem, creating an urgent focus on networking as a key enforcement point for security.” “Customers need a practical way to move forward while keeping their businesses running, and that is where Cisco partners lead,” Vaccaro wrote. Cisco Model Foundry On the product side, Cisco added security and control features to its Cloud Control platform, which melds the vendor’s disparate systems—such as Meraki and Nexus—into a single command center for enterprise operations and uses AI assistants and agents to diagnose and fix problems. Cisco Model Foundry is a new platform service in Cisco Cloud Control that lets customers and partners use Cisco AI models, fine-tuning them and running them using the customer’s own data, from one location. “Model Foundry opens up the models Cisco has built on four decades of networking, security, and operations knowledge,” wrote DJ Sampath , senior vice president and general manager, Cisco AI software and platform in a blog post . Those models include Deep Networking or Time Series as well as open models like Anteres, Foundation-SEC, and SecureBERT. “Several of them previously ran only inside our own products,” Sampath wrote. Users can “browse the catalog, open the Playground, paste in a real problem, and see how each model handles it before you commit,” Sampath wrote. “In Model Foundry, you create an API key, set an expiration, choose a model, and you’re connected. The API is OpenAI-compatible, so it plugs into the agents, tools, and workflows you already run. Administrators get tenant-scoped keys, per-model access controls, and full visibility into usage by model, key, and day.” “It’s built for the large volumes of data that partners and customers already have configs, log messages, alerts, tickets, and agent traces one place. Model Foundry is also the exclusive home of Cisco’s newest model versions and weights before broader release,” Sampath stated. Controlled availability begins with Cisco partners. ThousandEyes and Wi-Fi Cisco also has plans for its ThousandEyes intelligent network and application monitoring software. It’s integrating ThousandEyes into its Wi-Fi 6E and 7 access points to give customers continuous visibility into network conditions and improve the reliability of automated decisions made by AI agents, Cisco stated. “With nothing additional to buy, deploy, or configure, always-on ThousandEyes enables automated background testing that is designed to validate application and network performance around the clock,” Cisco stated . Another Wi-Fi-related announcement is Cisco’s plan to extend quantum readiness across wireless networks. Cisco is launching a Wi-Fi 7 access point with quantum-resilient capabilities. The Cisco Wireless CW9176ISEC, will feature quantum-safe capabilities aligned to CNSA 2.0, the NSA’s updated set of quantum-resistant algorithms. Starting in January, Cisco Wireless 9800 Series Wireless Controllers and Campus Gateways are also being refreshed to bring the same quantum-resilient security capabilities as the CW9176ISEC. “Wireless infrastructure deployed today will operate through major cryptographic changes. And this has already started with ‘harvest now, decrypt later’, where attackers are actively capturing encrypted traffic now to decrypt and exploit when quantum capabilities become available. Quantum risk also affects device identities, software signatures, and secure updates. Organizations may not know when quantum capabilities become operational, making it important to build these protections into infrastructure before those capabilities can be used against them,” wrote Peter Lane , vice president, product management for Cisco wireless enterprise networking, in a blog post . “Customers need a planned migration path that protects current investments and preserves trust across the wireless connection. Putting these protections in place now helps customers protect long-lived wireless investments before quantum capabilities can be used against them.” Networking Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers Cisco also said it would be adding Model Context Protocol servers for its networking platforms. The idea is to let AI agents and third-party applications access live network telemetry through standardized interfaces, according to Vikas Butaney , Cisco’s senior vice president of customer experience (CX) product management and marketing. ”The technology is designed to eliminate the need for custom integrations and enable automated workflows for troubleshooting, reporting and infrastructure management. It also removes the need for partners to build and maintain complex custom connections, making it simpler to create automated workflows for tasks like troubleshooting and reporting, while helping IT teams identify and resolve issues faster by linking deep telemetry directly to actionable experience metrics,” Butaney said. The growing sophistication of cyberattacks makes timely infrastructure intelligence increasingly important, Butaney said. Expanded support for Live Protect To help enterprises further guard against cyberattacks, Cisco is extending its Live Protect package to N9000 Series Switches, N9300 Smart Switches, Catalyst SD-WAN, C9000 Series Smart Switches, and CW9800 Wireless Controllers. Support on Cisco 8000 Secure Routers and Cisco Firewalls is due to be available by the end of 2026. Live Protect replaces disruptive, traditional patching cycles with real-time shields that mitigate vulnerabilities quickly rather than waiting weeks or months for a patch. The idea is to help administrators neutralize threats the moment they arise, ensuring a hardened security posture without sacrificing operational uptime, Shankar Varanasy, product management leader with Cisco’s data center networking team, wrote in a blog this summer . “This approach effectively eliminates the traditional trade-off between security and availability, allowing data centers to maintain a hardened, high-performance posture while ensuring continuous, uninterrupted service delivery.” Privileged infrastructure access Another offering aimed at protecting enterprise resources is being developed in collaboration with Teleport. Cisco is working with Teleport to develop an advanced network access technology that offers a network administrator specific access to Cisco routers and switches when needed for a particular task—and then removes it once that task is completed. “Privileged access should help teams restore service and keep the business connected—not create a permanent foothold for an attacker. Cisco Privileged Infrastructure Access gives people and agents governed, task-specific privilege that expires when the work is done, so infrastructure teams can move quickly without leaving privilege exposed,” wrote Matt Caulfield, vice president of product for Identity at Cisco, in a blog post. It’s unclear how this package will ultimately be available to customers. New Cisco IQ capabilities Cisco announced a number of new programs, including the general availability of Cisco IQ for Partners. Cisco IQ is the common foundation for all of Cisco’s customer experience (CX) support and professional services. IQ is an AI agent-based system that melds a host of enterprise infrastructure data from best practices, security advisories, configuration details, and more to give customers proactive recommendations, troubleshooting assistance, lifecycle guidance, and more. Partners can now use the Cisco IQ MCP Server and expanded API access to integrate intelligence into their own professional services, workflows, and AI agents. This lets partners instantly query customers to address short term risks like emerging AI-powered threats, Cisco stated With new Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) in Cisco IQ, customers can grant partners direct, secure visibility into their installed base. The idea is to use real-time data and APIs to operate at machine scale—spotting hidden network risks, eliminating manual exports, and proactively driving customer modernization, Cisco stated. Other new Cisco IQ capabilities include: AI-powered quantum safe and software end-of-vulnerability-support playbooks to help identify risks beyond routine patching. Priority bugs and software conformance assessments to spot outage risks and prioritize remediation. “For too long, partners walked into customer conversations without the same view Cisco had. That changes today,” said Liz Centoni, executive vice president and chief customer experience officer, Cisco, in a statement . “With Cisco IQ Partner Support Standard, partners get that same intelligence under their own brand, delivered through their own experts. It’s their name. Their customer relationship. Their services practice. Cisco IQ is the engine. Partners are the business.”