Cisco (Nasdaq:CSCO) is the dominant vendor in enterprise networking, and under CEO Chuck Robbins, it continues to shake things up.
Cisco is focusing on strategic AI initiatives and partnerships across various regions to build and power AI data centers and ecosystems. This includes collaborations with major players like BlackRock, Global Infrastructure Partners, Microsoft and Nvidia to drive investment and scale AI infrastructure.
The networking giant continues to focus on integrating AI into its security offerings, with announcements around Cisco Secure AI Factory with Nvida, which aims to embed security into all layers of AI infrastructure.
Cisco news and analysis
‘Zero Disco’ campaign hits legacy Cisco switches with fileless rootkit payloads
October 17, 2025: In newly disclosed real-world attacks, threat actors are found exploiting a Cisco SNMP vulnerability to gain remote code execution (RCE) and install Linux rootkits on vulnerable switches.
Cisco seriously amps-up Silicon One chip, router for AI data center connectivity
October 8, 2025: Cisco has unwrapped a high-end, 51.2 Tbps router and chip that it says will go a long way toward Cisco is introducing a new wireless certification track in response to demand for specialized wireless expertise. The Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) Wireless and Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert Enterprise (CCIE) Wireless certifications will replace the CCNP Enterprise wireless concentration. CCNP Enterprise will continue to focus on routing, switching, SD-WAN, security, automation, cloud connectivity, and virtualization.
Russian hackers exploit old Cisco flaw to target global enterprise networks
August 21, 2025: Russian state-sponsored cyber actors linked to the Federal Security Service (FSB) conducted a decade-long espionage campaign that compromised thousands of enterprise network devices across critical sectors worldwide, according to an FBI advisory. The threat actor, designated “Static Tundra” by Cisco Talos and previously known as “Berserk Bear” and “Dragonfly,” systematically exploited CVE-2018-0171, a six-year-old vulnerability in Cisco Smart Install (SMI), to gain deep access to enterprise network infrastructure and conduct reconnaissance on industrial control systems.
Cisco ties storage networking gear to IBM z17 mainframe
August 20, 2025: Cisco said its MDS 9000 Series multilayer switches, including the MDS 9148V switch, have been tested and validated for compatibility with IBM z17 mainframe environments. This latest generation of IBM mainframe features new AI acceleration technologies as well as improved management for hybrid cloud applications, encryption and threat detection, and integrated and simplified programming capabilities.
Warning: Patch this hole in Cisco Secure FMC fast
August 15, 2025: Admins using Cisco Systems Secure Firewall Management Center (FMC) Software for network login authentication are being warned to quickly patch a major vulnerability that could allow a remote attacker to breach security. At risk are deployments configured for RADIUS authentication for the web-based management interface, SSH management, or both, Cisco said in its alert.
Cisco Q4 results: AI infrastructure orders surpass goal
August 14, 2025: Cisco is seeing significant AI infrastructure demand and expects that growth to continue into next year, executives said as the company wrapped up its 2025 fiscal year.
Cisco strengthens AI networking story
August 13, 2025: Network infrastructure is described as the plumbing of the internet, with Cisco chief among the providers. As the AI era unfolds and that plumbing needs modernizing, Cisco is vying to secure its role as a key AI infrastructure provider across enterprise and hyperscaler networking environments.
Cisco teams with Hugging Face for AI model anti-malware
August 5, 2025: The Foundation AI team at Cisco teamed with AI model hub Hugging Face to bolster malware protection and strengthen security across the AI ecosystem.
Cisco warns of another critical RCE flaw in ISE, urges immediate patching
July 18, 2025: Cisco dropped another maximum severity advisory detailing an unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE) flaw in its Identity Services Engine (ISE) and ISE Passive Identity Connector (ISE-PIC).
Cisco upgrades 400G optical receiver to boost AI infrastructure throughput
July 17, 2025: Cisco unveiled a new optical receiver that lets data center customers better support AI and other high-throughput applications. The 400G bidirectional (BiDi) optical transceiver allows customers to upgrade to higher throughput without tearing out existing fiber
Hardcoded root credentials in Cisco Unified CM trigger max-severity alert
July 3, 2025: Cisco has patched a max severity flaw in its Unified Communications Manager (Unified CM) and Session Management Edition (Unified CM SME) products that could let attackers walk right in using a hardcoded root login.
Cisco warns of critical API vulnerabilities in ISE and ISE-PIC
June 26, 2025: Companies are being urged to quickly patch multiple vulnerabilities in Cisco Systems Identity Services Engine (ISE) and Cisco ISE Passive Identity Connector (ISE-PIC) that could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to issue commands on the underlying operating system as the root user.
Cisco CIO on the future of IT: AI, simplicity, and employee power
June 26, 2025: As Cisco infuses its enterprise infrastructure products with AI, the technology is also infiltrating its internal platforms, directed by Cisco CIO Fletcher Previn. His focus is on developing and using AI tools that can change how Cisco and its employees do business.
Cisco backs quantum networking startup Qunnect
June 24, 2025: Cisco Investments is backing Qunnect, a network hardware company that has designs on building quantum communication systems using existing telecom fiber.
Cisco capitalizes on Isovalent buy, unveils new load balancer
June 16, 2025: Since it acquired open-source software developer Isovalent in 2024, Cisco has been busy integrating its technology into some core products. In particular, Cisco has elevated the use of Isovalent’s core container communications technology, Kubernetes-native networking and security platform eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter).
Cisco underscores AI commitment with networking LLM, agentic AI interface
June 12, 2025: A wide range of new AI-based software and technology from Cisco is designed to manage, secure and automate network operations as well as to cement Cisco’s place at the center of customers’ AI infrastructure plans. Cisco rolled out the new wares at its Cisco Live event.
At Cisco Live, it’s all about AI for networking and security
June 11, 2025: Cisco Live focused on two aspects: AI being used to make Cisco technology smarter and easier to use, and Cisco innovations that will enable customers to adopt AI. An easy way to consider the two buckets is “AI for Cisco” and “Cisco for AI.”
Cisco Live: Security focus yields new firewalls, Hypershield integrations, and agentic AI defenses
June 11, 2025: At its Cisco Live event, the vendor rolled out a new Hybrid Mesh Firewall portfolio, bolstered security support with partner Nvidia, and further tightened its own technology integration with its Splunk platform. The announcements share a common goal of protecting all things AI – workloads, inferencing, models and more – as Cisco works to secure the core infrastructure that supports the AI build-out.
Cisco reinvigorates data center, campus, branch networking with AI demands in mind
June 10, 2025: Cisco has rolled out its first of many AI agents codeveloped with partner Mistral AI, a genAI and large language model (LLM) startup. The so-called AI Renewals Agent is an on-premise, AI-based application that Cisco’s internal Customer Experience (CX) group will use to help retain and renew customers more quickly.
Cisco’s ISE bugs could allow root-level command execution
February 7, 2025: Cisco is warning enterprise admins of two critical flaws within its identity and access management (IAM) solution, Identity Services Engine (ISE), that could allow attackers to obtain unauthorized privileges and run arbitrary commands on affected systems.
Cisco researchers highlight emerging threats to AI models
February 4, 2025: Cisco security researchers this week detailed a number of threats they are seeing from bad actors trying to attack the large language model, AI’s most common component. Being able to disguise and hide content from machine analysis or human oversight is likely to become a more important vector of attack against AI systems, according to Cisco..
Cisco touts ‘Internet of Agents’ for secure AI agent collaboration
January 30, 2025: When AI agents begin to proliferate, a new, open structure will be needed so they can securely communicate and collaborate together to solve complex problems, suggests Cisco. To head off potential problems such as agent sprawl and fragmented infrastructure, Cisco’s advanced research outfit Outshift is proposing the “Internet of Agents.”
Cisco patches antivirus decommissioning bug as exploit code surfaces
January 23, 2025: Cisco has patched a denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerability affecting its open-source antivirus software toolkit, ClamAV, which already has a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code available to the public.
Cisco CEO Robbins on AI: Pressure to deploy is real
January 22, 2025: Interest in AI has exploded over the last two or three years, but enterprises are only just beginning to think about how they’re going to take advantage of it, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins told the audience at the company’s recent AI Summit.
Cisco unveils AI Defense package
Jan. 15, 2025: Cisco rolled out a service that promises to protect enterprise AI development projects with visibility, access control, threat defense, and other safeguards. The AI Defense package offers protection to enterprise customers developing AI applications across models and cloud services, according to Tom Gillis, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s security, data center, Internet and cloud infrastructure groups.
Cisco in 2025: Lots of hard work ahead
Jan. 8, 2025: Cisco executed a fairly short list of technology rollouts in 2024 and made a surprising lack of major updates to its core networking portfolio, which might have contributed to the 23% decline in networking revenue. In 2025, Cisco needs to refocus on enterprise networking and make the data center an all-inclusive home for AI applications, industry watchers say. Security technologies must continue to be a priority as well.
Cisco in 2024: the highlights
Cisco grabs SnapAttack for threat detection
Dec. 17, 2024: Cisco is acquiring threat-detection startup SnapAttack for an undisclosed amount as it continues to expand its security portfolio. Established in 2001 by Booz Allen’s Dark Labs, SnapAttack is known for its threat detection and engineering technology, which melds threat intelligence, attack emulation, and behavioral analytics to help customers identify potential vulnerabilities and gaps in their networks, ideally before problems happen.
Cisco strengthens AWS integration to speed multicloud troubleshooting
Dec. 5, 2024: Cisco bolstered integrations between its own hybrid cloud offerings and AWS to improve visibility and help enterprise customers more accurately troubleshoot application availability issues across multicloud networks. The new network troubleshooting capabilities revolve around container security technology that Cisco gained in its acquisition of Isovalent and integrated into its infrastructure offerings.
Cisco, NTT Data partner to simplify private 5G connectivity
Nov. 26, 2024: Cisco and NTT Data extended their partnership to offer customers more streamlined options for deploying private 5G services for enterprise connectivity. The partnership ties Cisco’s networking technologies to NTT Data’s Transatel network.
Cisco: Pressure to deploy AI is up, but only 13% feel ready
Nov. 20, 2024: Pressure to implement AI plans is on the rise, but the readiness of enterprise networks to handle AI workloads has actually declined over the past year, according to Cisco’s AI Readiness Index.
Cisco amps up Splunk observability platform
Nov. 14, 2024: Updates to Cisco’s Splunk Observability portfolio include new features as well as tie-ins to Splunk AppDynamics to help IT teams unify visibility and improve performance troubleshooting across on-premises and cloud environments.
Cisco launches intelligent Wi-Fi 7 access points
Nov. 14, 2024: Cisco has taken the wraps off a pair of intelligent WiFi-7 access points and introduced a new way of licensing wireless gear across cloud, on-premises and hybrid networks.
Cisco IoT wireless access points hit by severe command injection flaw
Nov. 7, 2024: Cisco’s URWB hardware has been hit with a hard-to-ignore flaw that could allow attackers to hijack the access points’ web interface using a crafted HTTP request. Cisco said the issue affects three products: the Catalyst IW9165D Heavy Duty Access Points, the Catalyst IW9165E Rugged Access Points and Wireless Clients, and the Catalyst IW9167E Heavy Duty Access Points.
Cisco takes aim at developing quantum data center
Oct. 31, 2024: Cisco Research recently hosted its Quantum Summit 2024 gathering that drew industry experts to discuss ongoing work focused on everything quantum from networking to security, but it was research being done in the Data centers are notorious energy hogs, and the increase in heavy-duty networking and compute power required to handle AI workloads is only going to exacerbate the sustainability issue. But there are efforts underway to address the growth of AI and ML in data centers while keeping energy efficiency, cooling and performance in mind.
Beware the gap between security readiness and confidence levels, Cisco warns
March 27, 2024: Security readiness among enterprises has dropped in the past year, while the confidence level of many organizations is up. This disparity between confidence levels and security readiness suggests that companies may be overestimating their ability to navigate the threat landscape, Cisco reports in its newly released Cybersecurity Readiness Index.
Cisco: AI tools, better workspaces would boost in-office appeal
March 27, 2024: Cisco released its hybrid work study and found 72% of employees are positive about returning to the office, but they want better-equipped workspaces and more modern collaboration technologies. Office spaces at many companies are too focused on individual work rather than structured around spaces that can encourage collaboration, social interaction and creative brainstorming, according to the survey, which polled 14,050 employees and 3,800 employers in 19 countries worldwide.
Cisco taps former Microsoft, Broadcom exec
March 25, 2024: Martin Lund will lead the group responsible for delivering the silicon, optics, and hardware for Cisco’s core switching, routing, and wireless offerings.
Cisco, Intel expand Wi-Fi 7 partnership
March 21, 2024: Joint development work by Cisco and Intel is aimed at delivering more reliable Wi-Fi connectivity and new capabilities for latency-sensitive applications.
Cisco aims AI advancements at data center infrastructure
March 20, 2024: The Splunk buy and Cisco’s partnership with Nvidia are part of its
