Cisco Expands AI Agentic Security Portfolio: Will the Tech Deliver?

Cisco Systems CSCO is preparing for a future where AI agents become a major workforce inside enterprises. Agentic agents do not just answer questions; they take actions like managing systems, analyzing data and even making decisions. To support this shift, Cisco extends Zero Trust Access to agents with agent discovery in Cisco Identity Intelligence, agent Identity and Access Management (“IAM”) in Duo, and model context protocol policy enforcement and adaptive risk protection in Secure Access security service edge.

Cisco’s Agent Identity Management helps enterprises register agents in Duo IAM and map them to accountable human owners. This ensures every agent has a verified identity and enables traceability of actions. Meanwhile, Cisco Identity Intelligence discovers agentic and non-human identities to help organizations understand existing AI usage. Cisco is expanding AI Defense with powerful new tools that help organizations test, trust and secure their AI agents and the interactions between them. This solution is expected to address Agentic AI security issues that traditional scanning tools fail to detect.

Cisco’s Security revenues dropped 4% year over year to $2.01 billion in the second quarter of fiscal 2026. An expanding portfolio is driving clientele, which is expected to help the business recover. At Cisco Live Amsterdam, the company unveiled major AI defense and SASE advancements to help secure organizations as AI agents enter the workforce. Cisco SASE has launched a new semantic inspection engine that can evaluate the intent of Agentic interactions and block sophisticated, context-dependent threats. The company made AgenticOps the operating model for AI-driven IT to enable autonomous troubleshooting, continuous optimization and trusted validation.

Cisco is infusing security into the core of Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA. This helps enterprises safeguard their AI platforms and services not only from external threats but from rogue agent behavior. Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall delivers consistent security policies across a diverse set of enforcement points, including network switches, workload agents and more.

CSCO Faces Tough Competition in the Security Domain

Cisco is facing stiff competition from Fortinet FTNT and Okta OKTA in the security domain.

Fortinet's AI-powered security operations business is accelerating rapidly. The company powers more than 20 AI-driven solutions through its FortiAI technology across three main areas: FortiAI-Protect for secure AI usage, FortiAI-Assist for AI-assisted operations, and FortiAI-SecureAI for secure LLM and AI systems. With more than 500 issued and pending AI patents, Fortinet is well positioned to capitalize on growing AI security demand. The company launched its Secure AI Data Center solution, the industry's first end-to-end framework specifically designed for AI workloads, delivering high-capacity connectivity and up to 69% lower energy consumption than alternative solutions.

Okta’s offerings include Okta AI, a suite of AI-powered capabilities embedded across several products, which empowers organizations to harness AI for building better experiences and protecting against cyberattacks. The company benefits from strong demand for its new products, including Identity Governance, Privileged Access, Device Access, Fine Grained Authorization, Identity Security Posture Management and Identity Threat Protection with Okta AI. Okta expects revenues between $3.17 billion and $3.19 billion for fiscal 2027, indicating year-over-year growth of 9%.

CSCO Share Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates

Cisco shares have gained 7.2% year to date, outperforming the broader Zacks Computer and Technology sector’s 5.6% decline.

CSCO Stock’s Price Performance

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The CSCO stock is trading at a premium, with a trailing 12-month price/book of 6.77X compared with the Zacks Computer Networking industry’s 6.47X. Cisco has a Value Score of F.

CSCO Stock Is Overvalued

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The Zacks Consensus Estimate for third-quarter fiscal 2026 earnings is currently pegged at $1.03 per share, unchanged over the past 30 days, suggesting 7.3% growth from the figure reported in the year-ago quarter.

Cisco Systems, Inc. Price and Consensus

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Cisco currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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