Cisco has unveiled a new AI-driven platform aimed at helping organisations manage and defend critical IT infrastructure at machine speed, as the technology company seeks to address cybersecurity threats increasingly powered by autonomous AI agents.

The platform, called Cisco Cloud Control, was launched at the Cisco Live conference in Las Vegas and combines networking, security, observability and collaboration tools within a single management environment. According to Cisco, the software enables businesses to create and manage their own AI agents to monitor systems, identify threats and carry out automated remediation tasks.

Cisco said Cloud Control forms the foundation of its "AgenticOps" strategy, under which human operators and AI agents work together using a shared data layer and operational context. The platform enters controlled availability in the United States immediately, with wider global availability planned later.

Jeetu Patel, president and chief product officer at Cisco, said: "AI agents reason and act continuously at software speed, and that changes everything about how we scale, manage, and defend our critical infrastructure." He added that Cloud Control would provide a common environment where "your team and your AI agents work together, in the same environment, with the same information, and with humans in control."

Cisco's launch comes ahead of the expected release of Anthropic's Mythos AI model, which some experts believe could significantly increase the sophistication and speed of cyberattacks. Cisco executives told the Reuters that defenders will need automated systems capable of responding at machine scale as attackers increasingly deploy AI agents.

DJ Sampath, senior vice-president and general manager of AI software and platform at Cisco, told the news agency: "You can no longer do things at human scale. It has to be machine scale, from an operational perspective."

The company is embedding OpenAI's Codex coding assistant into Cloud Control and plans to launch a marketplace for third-party applications and AI tools in the second half of 2026. Reuters reported that Cisco expects to generate revenue from transactions through the marketplace, although pricing details have not yet been finalised.

Cisco paired the platform launch with a series of security initiatives, including broader deployment of its Live Protect technology, which applies protections against newly discovered vulnerabilities without requiring system reboots or software upgrades. The company also announced quantum-security measures, including quantum-safe secure boot for newly introduced networking products and new assessment tools designed to identify assets most vulnerable to future "harvest now, decrypt later" attacks.

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