Cisco beefs up AI, security in new networking products
The networking giant released a slew of products leveraging the capabilities of last year's Splunk acquisition and touting a focus on AI adoption support.
Cisco on Tuesday launched a barrage of products and updates that promise to enhance security and boost AI capabilities for enterprise and hyperscale customers.
During Cisco Live 2025, the company touted new tools for its Hybrid Mesh Firewall (including a new generation of firewalls), Universal Zero Trust Network Access and secure network architecture aimed at AI transformation.
While the AI angle for Cisco's new products is not shocking considering current market trends, the company's focus shows an important sign of the industry's evolution, said Bob O'Donnell, lead analyst and CEO of Technalysis.
They're doing AI, they're doing agentic AI … of course, everybody is doing that. But there are legitimate questions about how much networking is required to really do these things properly.
Bob O'DonnellLead analyst and CEO, Technalysis
"They're doing AI, they're doing agentic AI … of course, everybody is doing that. But there are legitimate questions about how much networking is required to really do these things properly. And I think they're trying to address that," O'Donnell said. They are bringing in more ease of use by leveraging agentic AI and their own LLM to make the process of managing these incredibly sophisticated, interwoven systems easier, and that's a big deal."
Hybrid Mesh Firewall and ZTNA
Cisco said its Hybrid Mesh Firewall and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) will simplify policy management, enhance visibility and allow enterprises to scale in a secure environment. Splunk's observability tools have been integrated further into Cisco's offerings, the company said. Cisco acquired Splunk for$28 billion last year.
"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, Cisco's president and chief product officer, in a statement. "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."
The company's Hybrid Mesh Firewall now has additional hardware offerings: the Secure Firewall 6100 series, which allows 200 Gbps per rack unit of firewalling and the Secure Firewall 200 series, which delivers advanced on-box threat inspection and integrated software-defined WAN.
Cisco's Universal ZTNA has added integration with Cisco Secure Access, enabling customers to explore connectivity options while protected by a unified security service edge policy and consistent enforcement, the company said.
The ZTNA will also allow customers to enable agentic AI securely with secure agentic identities, zero-trust access to enterprise resources and tracking of agent actions.
Secure network architecture additions
The company said its new network architecture will power campus, branch and industrial networks with an AI workload focus. A new series of smart switches, routers and an expanded wireless portfolio added to the company's hardware solutions.
The C9350 and C9610 smart switches deliver up to 51.2 TBps of networking power for campus networks. Cisco's expanded wireless portfolio will include Wireless 9179F Series Access Points tailored for stadiums and large venues.
Cisco's new unified management system adds integration with Splunk and ThousandEyes, adding what it describes as real-time insights from network to application.
"The combination of Splunk and ThousandEyes is a really big deal because all of a sudden, you have the ability to do the things you really couldn't do before," O'Donnell said. "Being able to really see what's going on with your network, what's going on with your applications, and make sure problems can get solved easily. Those are huge problems for enterprises."
Shane Snider is a veteran journalist with more than 20 years of industry experience.
