Cisco announces suite of innovations to boost secure AI adoption

Cisco today announced innovations to help enterprises reimagine security for the AI era. Security teams are racing to securely adopt AI throughout their enterprises, while threat actors are using AI to increase the frequency and reduce the cost of launching sophisticated cyberattacks. To overcome this unprecedented challenge, Cisco is fusing security capabilities deeper into its networking infrastructure, helping companies implement zero trust architectures, innovating on security for AI apps and models, and delivering AI tools that improve threat detection and remediation.

Key advancements announced at Cisco Live include solutions for Hybrid Mesh Firewall and Universal Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) that simplify policy management, enhance visibility, and enable enterprises to scale securely without adding complexity to their security stack. In addition, Cisco announced further Splunk integrations that unify data across platforms, helping security teams automate tasks and respond faster to threats. 

“Safety and security are the defining challenges of the AI era—and agentic AI multiplies the risk, as every new agent is both a force multiplier and a fresh attack surface,” said Jeetu Patel, President and Chief Product Officer, Cisco. “At the same time, threat actors are already leveraging AI tools to launch more sophisticated attacks than ever. To help IT and security teams fight back, Cisco is reimagining how we secure networks, protect AI apps and models, manage identity, and equip security teams with the AI tools they need to meet the moment.”

Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall and Universal ZTNA work together to deliver a robust zero-trust security framework that seamlessly integrates into the network. For zero-trust segmentation, AI application protection, and advanced threat protection across diverse environments, including data centers and IoT, Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall offers a distributed security fabric. This fabric includes Cisco and third-party firewalls, Cisco Hypershield, and Cisco Secure Workload. For secure, identity-driven access for users and devices, regardless of location, Universal ZTNA unifies policy management and extends zero trust principles even to unmanaged devices and IoT.

Together, these solutions secure user-to-application connections and back-end interactions, simplify management through Cisco’s Security Cloud Control, and enhance observability with AI-driven insights.

Cisco’s Hybrid Mesh Firewall is adding hardware as well as new enforcement points and policy management capabilities in Security Cloud Control: 

• Cisco Secure Firewall 6100 Series: Addresses complexity, cost, and scalability challenges in AI-ready data centers with high performance density for data center firewalling—200 Gbps per rack unit—and modular scalability.

• Cisco Secure Firewall 200 Series: Delivers advanced on-box threat inspection and integrated software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) for distributed branches.

• Expanded Enforcement Points: Cisco Security Cloud Control will extend unified policy management to next-generation firewall (NGFW) on Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN (including on the new Cisco 8000 Secure Router Series), Cisco Hypershield-ready C9000 Smart Switches, and Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) data center fabrics. 

• Multi-Vendor Segmentation Policy: Cisco Security Cloud Control introduces Mesh Policy Engine, enabling teams to define a single intent-based policy that is enforced across Cisco and third-party firewalls.

Cisco’s Universal ZTNA will also bring customers new innovations that simplify secure connectivity and enhance visibility across hybrid environments and AI agents:

• Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Simplified: All Cisco SD-WAN offerings, including Meraki, now integrate with Cisco Secure Access. This enables customers to choose the optimal branch connectivity while still enjoying a unified security service edge (SSE) policy and consistent enforcement.

• Frictionless Phishing Resistance: With the launch of Duo Identity and Access Management (IAM), Duo now acts as an identity broker. With a new complete passwordless option and unique proximity verification capability, Duo layers end-to-end phishing resistance on top of existing identity infrastructure. 

Cisco is advancing its Universal Zero Trust architecture to:

• Secure agentic identities.

• Enable seamless zero-trust access to enterprise resources.

• Provide comprehensive tracking of agent actions.

Cisco’s vision integrates cutting-edge capabilities, including automated agent discovery, delegated authorization, secure zero trust agentic access, and native support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP). 

This approach is powered by Cisco Duo IAM, Cisco Identity Intelligence, Cisco Secure Access, and Cisco AI Defense, unified under a single policy framework in Security Cloud Control.

Splunk Integrations

Advancements between Cisco and Splunk strengthen interoperability across key security workflows. This expanded functionality includes:

• Surface Insights from Cisco Secure Firewall integrated with Splunk: Customers using Cisco Secure Firewall will be able to unlock deeper threat insights within Splunk by ingesting firewall log data.

• Expanded Threat Detection, Investigation, and Response (TDIR) Coverage with Enhanced Detection Integration with Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense: The Cisco Security Cloud App for Splunk now delivers deeper support for Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense (FTD), enabling enriched correlation and detection content aligned to TDIR workflows. Combined with telemetry from Cisco AI Defense, Cisco XDR, Cisco Multicloud Defense, Cisco Talos, and other sources, Splunk accelerates detection use cases across hybrid environments. 

• Streamlined TDIR with Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) integrations for Cisco Secure Firewall: Expanded SOAR integrations now include Cisco Secure Firewall-specific actions to support containment and response within TDIR workflows. This is in addition to the currently available Cisco Talos Threat Intel integration. Playbooks can automatically isolate hosts, block outbound connections, and apply policy controls, reducing manual effort and accelerating resolution. 

• Connected Application Risk Signals from Splunk AppDynamics: By forwarding secure application events into Splunk, security teams gain visibility into application-layer vulnerabilities and threats, helping to contextualize findings within broader business risk. 

For more information on Cisco’s security solutions, visit cisco.com/go/security.