Cisco Live US 2026: The System Everything Runs On - Security, AI, and Connected Intelligence at Work

On By Amit Barave5 Min Read

The most important conversations your organization will have today will happen in your collaboration platform. Deals will close. Patients will be served. Decisions will be made. And AI agents will be working alongside your people in every one of them.

That’s the reality of modern collaboration: the tool that was once a productivity nice-to-have has become the system everything runs on. Which means the infrastructure beneath it—the security, the intelligence, the deployment model—matters more than it ever has.

Today, we’re announcing the next chapter of Connected Intelligence—a system where every interaction builds on the last, context follows people wherever work happens, and the platform grows smarter over time. Where security is the foundation, intelligence is continuous, and the value of every conversation, every decision, every connection compounds across your organization.

Security: Trust Is Architectural

AI agents are expanding across the enterprise. Every agent operating in your environment represents a decision your organization made—about access, about action, about accountability. Regulators are beginning to formalize expectations. Boards are already asking for answers. The question is no longer whether your AI is capable. It’s whether you can govern it, audit it, and answer for everything it did. That’s why security is the foundation of everything built into Webex—an architectural commitment that runs from the network to the device to the AI layer.

Webex Zero Trust architecture now extends to every surface where collaboration happens—meetings, messages, recordings, whiteboards—with enhanced end-to-end encryption that is tamper-proof and auditable. Deepfake detection, in partnership with Pindrop, brings real-time synthetic voice and video verification to Webex Meetings and Calling. And Quantum-Safe Cryptography is on the roadmap, helping to ensure that data protected today can remain protected forever.

As AI agents expand across the enterprise, governance becomes as important as capability. Cisco AI Defense and AI Guardrails in Control Hub give IT administrators clear boundaries and governance of AI interactions across their environment.

Enhanced Survivability keeps collaboration running when connectivity is compromised, and Webex Compliance Hub brings audit, eDiscovery, and data governance together for the regulated industries that need it most.

Trust is architectural. You cannot claim it. You must build it in.

Intelligent Collaboration: Every Interaction Makes the Next One Smarter

The nature of collaboration has changed. It is no longer a discrete activity: a meeting scheduled, attended, and forgotten. It is a continuous loop. Context accumulates. Intelligence compounds. Every interaction generates something that makes the next one more informed, more efficient, more connected to the work that matters.

This is why Webex acts as an intelligent orchestrator. It connects people to the context they need—wherever they’re working, whatever application they’re in. The intelligence follows them, not the other way around.

Webex Suite includes a coordinated system of agents that can handle routine work autonomously when asked: capturing discussions, converting verbal commitments into action items, updating CRM records, and managing front-desk operations around the clock. Working in the background, these capabilities can return time and attention to the work that actually matters to you.

Two new agents represent the next frontier. The Meeting Prep Agent synthesizes previous notes, shared documents, and message threads before you join a meeting—delivering the right context at the right moment, directly in Webex. Participants can save time prepping for the meeting and can arrive prepared. Webex handled the prep work so they won’t have to.

The Webex Translator Agent delivers speech-to-speech translation that carries voice, tone, emotion, and cadence into another language. A sales executive in Chicago speaks English. Her counterpart in Tokyo hears her in Japanese—with her conviction and enthusiasm intact. A healthcare provider in London consults with a patient in Lisbon without a human interpreter in the room. At launch, ten languages are supported: English, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese, and Spanish, with more to follow.

AI Agent Studio, Microsoft Copilot, and the Expanding Ecosystem

Individual agents solve specific problems. An ecosystem of agents—governed consistently, connected across platforms—changes how work gets done at scale.

This week, we’re excited to announce that Webex is transforming enterprise engagement by extending our comprehensive, secure AI Agent studio across our entire Collaboration portfolio. The ability to build, deploy, and manage voice and digital multi-modal AI agents across any internal or external use case, allows IT and admins to prioritize consistency. Leveraging the intuitive design environment, AI Agent Studio, organizations can create everything from pre-configured self-service workflows to highly customized agents that span collaboration and third-party channels.

Additionally, for the millions of organizations running Microsoft 365, Webex now integrates bi-directionally with Microsoft Copilot. Webex content is searchable in Copilot. Microsoft content is accessible in Webex. Your teams stay in the tools they already use, and intelligence follows them across both platforms.

And the Webex AI ecosystem is expanding, with integrations across Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, Amazon Quick, and more—all governed through the same security architecture as every other Webex AI capability.

Connected Intelligence isn’t about building walls. It’s about building bridges.

Flexible Deployment: Meeting You Where You Are

For organizations running collaboration as critical infrastructure, deployment isn’t a preference—it’s a risk decision. A hospital system subject to data residency laws, a federal agency operating in an air-gapped environment, a multinational navigating eight different regulatory frameworks: each of them needs the power of Webex AI on their own terms. That’s what flexible deployment makes possible.

Webex Suite delivers consistent AI capabilities across every deployment model—cloud, hybrid, on-premises, and air-gapped—so organizations can deploy based on their security posture, on their terms.

In the cloud: continuous innovation across 195+ markets. On premises: AI capabilities that run locally on Cisco Unified Communications Manager—FedRAMP authorized, FIPS 140-3 certified, with no data leaving the building and AI Assistant for Government generally available on FedRAMP-authorized infrastructure. In hybrid environments: Webex Calling Hybrid maintains on-premises call control while accessing cloud innovation when you’re ready.

And for the most sensitive environments, where cloud connectivity isn’t an option, Cisco AI PODs 

And for the most sensitive environments, where cloud connectivity isn’t an option, Cisco AI PODs change the equation entirely. Purpose-built by Cisco and accelerated by NVIDIA, AI PODs (available now) are not a generic appliance running third-party software in a box. They are a fully integrated system—hardware, software, and AI inference stack—designed specifically by and for Webex, validated end-to-end, and deployable where no cloud will ever reach. Transcription, summarization, and intelligent assistance run locally with zero cloud dependencies and total data control. For regulated industries, national security environments, and any organization where data sovereignty is non-negotiable, AI PODs are the answer..

The approach inverts the traditional model. Instead of requiring data to travel to intelligence in the cloud, Webex brings intelligence to the data, wherever it lives. Control stays with you.

The System That Compounds

Collaboration carries consequences now. The decision made in this morning’s meeting becomes context for this afternoon’s customer call. The action item captured by an agent becomes the ticket resolved by tomorrow morning.

This is the power of Connected Intelligence: a system where every interaction can make the next one smarter. Where security is the foundation that makes trust possible, context follows people wherever work happens, and the system runs where the organization needs it to. Organizations that recognize this shift and build on infrastructure architected for it won’t just collaborate more efficiently, they’ll compound the value of every conversation, every decision, every connection, over time.

One system. Any deployment. Secure by design.

About The Author

Amit Barave
Amit Barave VP/GM, Webex Suite & AI, Collaboration Cisco
Amit Barave is Vice President and General Manager for Cisco's Webex Suite and AI, where he leads a multi-billion-dollar SaaS business delivering collaboration solutions to enterprises worldwide.
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