NJS Inner Circle Blog Picks

Every year at Cisco Live U.S., I spend time with the people who keep the world running. The IT teams behind hospitals, power grids, banks, airlines, and governments. The operators who get paged at 2 a.m. The security teams racing against adversaries who never take a day off. This year there’s more urgency than ever. The environment we’re operating in has changed faster in the last 18 months than in the previous decade. In that context, agentic AI has massive implications for

A year ago, at Cisco Live, we previewed Cisco AI Canvas, an agentic workspace where IT teams and AI agents investigate and resolve issues across every domain. It was built for teams that need to move from alert to evidence, from evidence to decision, and from decision to resolution faster. During beta testing, AI Canvas was available in Meraki and Splunk. Today, Cisco AI Canvas is moving into Controlled Availability as an integrated part of Cisco Cloud Control rather than in

Every few decades, infrastructure gets a new abstraction. We went from racking hardware to virtualizing it, then from clicking through consoles to writing infrastructure as code. Each shift changed who could build, how fast they could move, and what was possible to defend. The next abstraction isn’t coming. It’s already here. As Jeetu Patel captured, agentic AI is kicking off a networking supercycle — the era of managing critical infrastructure at human scale is over. What co

Never miss a crisis to drive meaningful change, and this summer will be one of those crisis-driven opportunities. The entire industry has been operating on the principle that infrastructure should be carefully tested, validated, rolled out and then changed as little as possible. In a pre-Mythos world, this infrastructure might only have a dozen or so critical vulnerabilities over the course of a year, and it would take months before attackers would start to exploit the vulne

When we launched Cisco IQ, we moved from fragmented, reactive infrastructure management to a unified, proactive, and deterministic operational reality accelerated by AI. With over 1,500 customers onboarded in just six weeks, we are seeing firsthand how this intelligence engine is transforming our customers’ experience. But intelligence is not a static destination – it is an evolving capability. As we continue to build out the Cisco IQ roadmap, I am excited to share the next w

Over the past several decades, campus networks have evolved from connecting wired computers, to supporting wired and wireless managed devices, to securely connecting an ever-growing mix of managed, unmanaged, and IoT devices. Today, another shift is underway. Systems increasingly do more than inform people—they act on behalf of people. AI agents can update records, trigger workflows, access systems, and make decisions in real time. In hospitals, factories, offices, and stores

When we launched Cisco IQ, I said the AI era arrived mid-cycle. It landed on infrastructure that was never designed for it, and the engineers responsible for that infrastructure were spending their best hours on work that humans were never designed to do. That is still true. But the threat environment has shifted underneath it. The attacks are faster. The compliance mandates are real. The environments that cannot connect to a cloud still need intelligence to run them. And the

I am pleased to share that Cisco has been named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Enterprise Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure. This recognition reflects the focus and execution of our teams and partners, and the trust customers place in us to deliver networks that are simpler to operate, secure by design, and ready for AI. I see it as validation of the strategic direction we have been pursuing. We have brought Cisco Switching and Cisco Wireless together i

Executive summary In early April of 2026, Anthropic announced that it would be holding back on releasing their new AI model, Mythos. Due to deep concerns around the offensive cyber capability of that model, Anthropic decided to work with select companies, including Cisco, so that those companies could use the model to find and patch security vulnerabilities. Cisco is changing our near-future threat modeling of AI-enabled attackers in view of our experience with Mythos. That,

The world of Cybersecurity has fundamentally changed. Today, I’m proud to share that Cisco is joining the world’s most critical cyber defenders to confront the most consequential shift in the history of our industry. Anthropic’s Project Glasswing unites organizations that share a common conviction: the emergent and soon-to-be proficient capability of AI in cybersecurity demands we move forward together – transparently, urgently, and with a strong defense of the digital world

Today, I’m thrilled to announce our intent to acquire Astrix Security Ltd., a pioneer in Non-Human Identity (NHI) Security. We’re seeing an explosion of AI agents that are already reshaping the digital enterprise. Soon, every person in an organization will be supported by a network of AI agents working continuously at machine speed, accessing data, making decisions, and taking action on their behalf. These agents represent an entirely new class of coworker: capable of incredi

Quantum computing is the future of computational power. It’s expected to transform how complex problems are solved in a wide range of industries, from drug discovery and financial modeling, to weather predictions, and cybersecurity. But how and when will quantum computing become accessible to these fields and beyond? Roadmaps from leading vendors project physical qubit counts reaching somewhere between 1,000 and low 10,000s within the next three years. That sounds impressive,

As artificial intelligence (AI) transforms industries globally, the demand for robust, scalable, and high-performance infrastructure has reached an all-time high. At NVIDIA GTC, we recently unveiled the next generation of Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric options that support AI, which are purpose-built to accelerate innovation and meet the rigorous requirements of modern AI workloads. What is Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric? Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric is a cloud-managed controller designed to s

Somewhere right now, a Cisco colleague is on a call with a company facing the worst day of their professional lives. Their network is compromised, their data may be stolen, and their business is at risk. That Cisco colleague is calm, focused, and already three steps into solving the problem. Meet Cisco Talos Incident Response , or Talos IR – our frontline response team. These are colleagues who have dedicated their careers to being present when organizations face genuine cr

As quantum computing rapidly advances, it presents a profound threat to the cryptographic foundations that currently secure our digital communications. This risk is particularly pronounced in the campus and branch networks that connect a vast array of today’s users, IoT and OT devices, and applications across multiple, diverse locations. This extensive connectivity significantly expands the attack surface and increases network complexity, which makes security enforcement more

A shopper walks into a store with a specific need. Maybe they’re fixing an irrigation system, planning a meal, or trying to resolve a membership issue. Instead of searching aisles or waiting for help, they walk up to an assistant and start a conversation. The assistant understands the store, the inventory, and the context of the question. It responds immediately, in the shopper’s preferred language, and guides them to what they need next. But here’s the catch; the assistant i

Back in February, Cisco introduced a bold architectural shift to data center networking with the launch of the Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches—a new class of switch that unifies networking and security into a single, future-proof platform. Today’s data center operators are looking for simpler and more secure ways to scale their environments, without the need to layer on multiple security solutions. N9300 Series Smart Switches, part of the Cisco Nexus portfolio, deliver on t

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the manufacturing industry by reducing costs, optimizing supply chain management, and introducing automation for efficiency gains wherever possible. With the use of predictive maintenance, teams can identify issues and forecast problems, as well as implement timely resolution to prevent downtime. By combining IoT sensors with AI analytics, manufacturers can detect equipment anomalies, improve product quality, and streamline product

Is your IT team racing to keep up with the pace of modern technology—and falling behind? As networks become more complex and workloads run nonstop, traditional operations methods simply can’t keep up. The old playbook isn’t built for today’s demands. The future of operations is AgenticOps—a model Cisco is advancing to move from isolated insights to AI-driven action. Introduced by Cisco Senior Vice President Aruna Ravichandran earlier this year, AgenticOps combines: A purpose-

Cisco wanted to make generative AI available to every single employee in a secure, cost-optimized way. To do this, Cisco IT developed an internal AI-powered assistant — purpose-built with security — designed to elevate how employees work. More than just another tool, Cisco’s internal AI assistant drives significant efficiency and frictionless experiences for employees – with 73% of users reporting increased productivity and an average time savings of 5 hours per week. As AI