Volume 343, Issue 3 · 15 articles from 2 issues
NVIDIA and Cisco unveil USFP, a high-density 400Gb/s-per-lane pluggable optical module form factor for AI factories.
At OCP, NVIDIA and Cisco announced plans for the Ultra-Dense Small Form Factor Pluggable (USFP), a high-density optical module running 400Gb/s per lane, designed for next-generation AI factories that use pluggable transceivers.
More bandwidth per connection and more connections per switch can avoid adding switch layers that raise latency, power and cost.
USFP is meant to help builders move from 200Gb/s to 400Gb/s per lane.
Cisco introduces new silicon, systems and optics at the OCP Global Summit 2026 to advance open AI infrastructure.
At the Open Compute Project Global Summit 2026, Cisco introduced new silicon, systems and optical innovations for open AI infrastructure, from rack-scale compute to distributed AI capacity.
Cisco says the announcements show how it engineers the network as a coherent, programmable architecture while preserving openness and choice.
The company reiterated its commitment to an open stack from silicon to Kubernetes, targeting hyperscalers, neoclouds and enterprises.
Cisco previews Wi-Fi 8 and what it will mean for dense, demanding enterprise networks, though deployment is 3-5 years away.
Cisco traces Wi-Fi's evolution from 802.11b's 11 Mbps to today's multigigabit Wi-Fi 7.
It says enterprises face unprecedented device density, bandwidth-hungry applications and rising expectations from hybrid workers.
Cisco presents Wi-Fi 8 as the next frontier and says it will reshape how enterprises think about connectivity.
Mainstream deployment is 3 to 5 years away, but Cisco is sharing the roadmap now.
Cisco describes runtime protection for cloud workloads combining Cisco Security, Splunk and SentinelOne.
Cisco notes that containers, microservices and serverless functions give attackers a moving target and give defenders little time to react.
Modern attackers exploit running workloads with zero-days, fileless techniques and unauthorized binaries, then move laterally.
Cisco argues perimeter-only defenses are not enough.
The post explains how Cisco Security, Splunk and SentinelOne work together for real-time protection from endpoint to cloud.
Cisco's DefenseClaw adds an Edge Connector that secures AI agents running on constrained IoT and robotics hardware.
AI agents increasingly control robots, drones, factory equipment and building systems, where a compromise has immediate physical consequences.
DefenseClaw already secured agents on standard machines, but many physical agents run on constrained devices like a Raspberry Pi or Jetson Nano.
Its new Edge Connector is a compact component that runs on IoT hardware, intercepting the agent's tool calls and deciding in microseconds whether to allow or block them.
Cisco sets out a policy agenda for Asia Pacific governments to prepare for post-quantum cryptography.
Cisco warns that cryptographically relevant quantum computers could break much of today's public-key cryptography, with some industry estimates suggesting this could happen as early as 2029.
The risk starts now through 'Harvest Now, Decrypt Later' attacks and a related 'Trust Now, Forge Later' threat to digital signatures, while post-quantum cryptography offers algorithms designed to withstand quantum attacks.
The post outlines policy steps for post-quantum readiness across Asia Pacific.
Cisco explains how Cisco Security and Splunk help operators apply the NSA's new Zero Trust guidance for operational technology.
Cisco notes that OT controllers can run for decades and often cannot support modern security tools or tolerate disruptive changes.
The NSA's new guidance offers operators a way to apply Zero Trust principles while keeping safety and availability in view.
The NSA warns that attacks on critical infrastructure threaten national and economic security, public health and safety.
Cisco describes how Cisco Security and Splunk help put the guidance into practice.
Cisco tells partners that AI workloads and faster exploitation make data center network modernization urgent.
Cisco says data center performance is increasingly measured in time: time to first token, time to remediation and time to value.
AI workloads are pushing bandwidth, power and infrastructure requirements to new levels.
Frontier AI models such as Mythos are accelerating vulnerability discovery and shrinking the time to exploit from days to hours or minutes.
Cisco urges partners to help customers close the gap between their existing networks and what AI-era workloads demand.
Cisco outlines how transportation departments can modernize for V2X safety without compromising the security of traffic controls.
Cisco says roadways are at a breaking point as urban density raises the complexity of managing traffic, protecting vulnerable road users and maintaining aging infrastructure.
Departments of Transportation must modernize to support Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) technology for traffic efficiency and safety.
Cisco stresses they must do so without compromising the security of critical traffic controls, often on limited budgets.
The post describes how secure, intelligent infrastructure supports Vision Zero-style safety goals.
Cisco explains why the CCIE Collaboration Design module trips up good engineers and how to reason toward the right answer.
Cisco's learning blog walks through the Design module of the CCIE Collaboration lab, where candidates get a customer brief and several design options.
Cisco notes that often three options would technically work but only one fits the customer.
There is no device to log into or show command to confirm an answer, so candidates must reason their way to it.
The post explains why the module trips up good engineers and how to prepare.
Cisco says Workday Agent Passport is in Early Access, with Cisco AI Defense as launch assessor providing adversarial testing.
Cisco says Workday Agent Passport, now in Early Access, gives customers a signed, auditable record of what has been verified about an agent, who verified it and to what standard.
Cisco AI Defense is Agent Passport's launch assessor and provides the adversarial testing behind the security stamps on agents Workday develops.
Workday introduced Agent Passport at DevCon in June with Cisco as launch partner.
Cisco shares what it has learned and why it matters for every agentic platform.
Cisco starts a series on Antares, a local model that finds where an advisory's vulnerability class lives in your code.
Cisco describes the 'triage tax' engineers pay when an advisory, such as a CWE-22 path traversal, names a dependency but not where the bug sits in a large repository.
Finding that location can take hours of grep before anyone can judge exposure.
This first post in the Security Loop series introduces Antares, a security analyst model that runs locally on a laptop.
Cisco positions Antares as a way to answer where a known vulnerability class actually lives in code.
Cisco explains how DefenseClaw and NVIDIA OpenShell constrain coding agents that act with a developer's full access rights.
Cisco says AI coding agents can read repositories, write code, run builds and tests, and push changes, often without stopping to ask.
Because an agent acts with the full access rights of the developer who started it, an unsafe tool call can expose credentials, unrelated files and internal services.
Agents can also write and run code that makes file and network requests beyond their visible actions.
The post describes how Cisco DefenseClaw and NVIDIA OpenShell work together to protect enterprises from these risks.
Cisco DevNet says AI-assisted development let 12 engineers rebuild PubHub in about 5.5 months instead of the planned nine.
Cisco says a security mandate in early 2026 forced the DevNet PubHub team to rebuild the tool on a new stack, with nine months planned.
Using AI-assisted development, the team shipped in about five and a half months, with 12 engineers producing the output of about 20.
PubHub is the publishing tool behind DevNet API documentation, Learning Labs, DevCenters and Microsites.
This first part covers decisions and results, with engineering detail in a companion AI for SDLC series.
Cisco urges organizations to build post-quantum readiness into current infrastructure, security and product strategy.
Cisco says the strategy organizations set now across infrastructure, security, products and partnerships will shape their long-term resilience.
Sufficiently powerful quantum computers could break the public-key cryptography that protects data, identity and software integrity.
Cisco warns this could expose credentials, financial records or government communications, or let devices accept fraudulent software updates.
The post lays out how to start building quantum readiness into today's infrastructure.