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 question of whether your security posture is actually good enough has never had a satisfying answer, because until now, there was no benchmark to check it against.

That is what we are fixing today.

Cisco Live is where we stop talking about the future and start showing the work. No vision decks. No roadmap slides. Just the capabilities you need to manage complexity and uncover the threats that are already inside your perimeter.

This year I’ll be taking to the stage to show how we are extending Cisco IQ into the environments that were left behind, and how we’re tackling the AI threats that are outpacing your current security model.

We are closing that gap by bringing agentic intelligence into the most isolated corners of your network and matching the speed of the attackers you face.

Here is what we are announcing, available July 2026. And here is why each one exists.

Resilient Infrastructure Services

The speed of AI-enabled attacks has fundamentally broken the traditional patch cycle and collapsed the exploit window from weeks to minutes. Resilient Infrastructure Services is a three-phased service designed specifically for the post-Mythos era.

While our product teams build and release patches, we help you act faster than the attacker. We map your attack surface, identify the highest-risk exposures, apply compensating controls where immediate patching is not possible, and build a path to full remediation. The goal is simple: minimize the time between disclosure and protection.

Quantum Ready Assessments

Most organizations know quantum computing is coming. Very few know what it means for the infrastructure they are running right now. The “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later” attack is not a future scenario. If your devices are running cryptographic algorithms that will not survive that moment, your sensitive data is already at risk; it just hasn’t surfaced yet.

We are not waiting for Q-Day to act. We are delivering an automated, agentic assessment that evaluates every device against three criteria: secure communications, secure platforms, and cryptographic agility. This gives you a prioritized roadmap to configure, patch or replace before the window closes.

Cisco IQ On-Prem, Air-Gapped

For many organizations, data sovereignty and local control are non-negotiable. Which is why we’re bringing the full agentic intelligence of Cisco IQ into fully isolated environments, delivering AI-driven insights locally with no external cloud connectivity required. The capability, running entirely within your security perimeter. You no longer have to choose between data sovereignty and operational effectiveness.

Peer Benchmarking

There is a question every IT leader gets asked and almost none can answer with confidence: are we ahead of our peers or behind? The honest answer, until now, has been that there was no way to know. That changes with Cisco IQ. With Peer Benchmarking, you can now compare your posture against anonymized, aggregated data from industry peers. Real data from organizations like yours. Not industry averages. Actual peer comparison. This provides the real-time evidence you need to validate security investments and concentrate resources where the gap is.

Unified Operations and Insights

Cisco customers benefit from the seamless integration between Cisco Cloud Control and Cisco IQ, the unified digital interface for Cisco Support and Professional Services experience. Cisco Cloud Control delivers real-time monitoring and AI-powered collaboration for operations teams managing live environments, Cisco IQ provides IT leaders with proactive lifecycle insights, expert guidance, and personalized support. Together, they share data bi-directionally to create a unified Cisco experience that helps customers move from insight to action, resolve issues faster, and achieve better business outcomes.

What This Looks Like Together

Cisco IQ launched as the delivery vehicle for Cisco support and professional services, 40 years of institutional knowledge made continuously available before you have to ask for it.

What we are announcing today extends that in every direction that matters.

Into the threat categories that are active now, not theoretical. Into the environments that have been underserved by modern tooling. Into the response model that matches the speed of the AI-attacks you are facing.

Every agentic action is still deterministic, validated, and governed before it touches your infrastructure. AI surfaces the insight. You make the decision. Accountability stays with Cisco.

Learn More

• Press release: Cisco unveils agentic platform for operating and defending critical IT infrastructure
• Get a Deeper Dive: Cisco IQ: Scaling Secure Resilience by Bhaskar Jayakrishnan, SVP Engineering, Cisco Customer Experience