Cisco has introduced a new unified platform called Cisco Cloud Control, aimed at helping organizations defend their IT infrastructure against automated cyber threats. The company announced the tool on Monday at its annual Cisco Live conference in Las Vegas.
The platform is designed to allow businesses and government entities to build and deploy artificial intelligence agents that can monitor systems, neutralize threats, and remove intruders at machine speed.
The system provides a single login and shared data layer across networking, security, compute, observability, and collaboration tools. This setup allows human teams and AI agents to operate from the same information base.
DJ Sampath, senior vice president and general manager of AI software and platform at Cisco, stated that operational responses must now occur at machine scale rather than human scale to keep pace with automated attacks.
A key feature of the platform is Live Protect, which acts as a runtime shield for Cisco products. This function blocks newly discovered vulnerabilities without requiring system reboots, software upgrades, or scheduled maintenance windows. Live Protect is currently available on Cisco's N9000 series switches and will expand to campus and branch smart switches, with secure routers to follow later in the year.
Cisco also announced that all new campus, branch, and data center routers, switches, and firewall products will include quantum-safe secure boot capabilities. The company plans to enable quantum-safe communications across most of its core portfolio by December 2026.
To assist customers in identifying assets vulnerable to future decryption attacks, Cisco is launching Quantum Ready Assessments through its AI-powered Cisco IQ tool, with global availability planned for July 2026.