In today’s enterprise, more doesn’t always mean better.
More clouds. More tools. More policies. More users.
And with it, more complexity.
For many IT teams, this has created a kind of paradox: the more tools we add to support our growing business needs, the harder it becomes to actually move the needle.
The network is no longer just a transport layer—it’s central to how the business operates. And when networking and security are managed across disconnected tools and workflows, even routine changes can slow things down.
That’s why the conversation is shifting. It’s no longer just about faster connectivity—it’s about simplifying how networks are built, secured, and operated. It’s the ability to define policy once and apply it consistently, gain end-to-end visibility, and pivot from a traditional WAN to a high-performance, AI-ready fabric—all without rebuilding your entire architecture from scratch.
With Cisco SD-WAN 26.1.1, we’re focused on helping organizations do exactly that:
- Strengthen security and resilience at scale
- Build a WAN that’s ready for AI
Strengthen security and resilience at scale
As environments scale, security must scale with them—without introducing friction.
Configuration security protocol dashboard for Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN: Maintaining a secure and resilient network goes beyond enforcing policies—it requires continuous visibility into configuration risks across the infrastructure. Built on the principles of Cisco’s Resilient Infrastructure initiative, this capability helps ensure your network is continuously hardened against evolving risks.
By addressing vulnerabilities in CLI and UI configurations, it helps protect the control plane from unauthorized access and privilege escalation. With these enhanced security advisory capabilities, you get a single, centralized view through the Insecure Configurations dashboard to identify insecure or outdated configurations across your SD-WAN fabric, assess the trust posture of devices in real time, and take guided actions to remediate vulnerabilities.
The result is a more resilient network with:
- Stronger configuration hygiene: Proactively surface and address aging or insecure settings across your global fabric
- Real-time trust visibility: Gain immediate insight into the security posture of routers and controllers
- Simplified security operations: Move from vulnerable legacy setups to hardened, best-practice configurations with automated, guided workflows
Learn more
Org-wide firewall policies in Meraki: Managing firewall policies one network at a time does not scale for distributed organizations. With org-wide group policies, teams can define reusable policies once and enforce them consistently across the organization. This enables a more centralized and flexible approach to policy management, reducing operational overhead while ensuring consistency across environments.
Improved TLS decryption performance: With the majority of internet traffic now encrypted, TLS decryption plays a critical role in threat detection. At the same time, inspection must not come at the cost of performance.
With enhanced TLS decryption capabilities, organizations can inspect encrypted traffic more effectively while maintaining a high-quality user experience.
Platforms such as the Cisco Catalyst 8375-G2 deliver up to 1.6 Gbps throughput on 100% HTTPS traffic, enabling teams to achieve strong security outcomes without introducing performance bottlenecks.
Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN for Government integration with Cisco Secure Access FedRAMP instances: Government agencies require secure, compliant networking solutions that meet stringent federal security standards. Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN for Government now integrates with Cisco Secure Access FedRAMP instances, enabling government organizations to maintain secure connectivity while ensuring compliance with federal security standards. Policy groups in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Manager enable agencies to define IPSec tunnels and connection parameters to Secure Access instances, ensuring secure and compliant access across their network infrastructure.
Making your network AI-ready
AI is fundamentally changing how networks operate—and what they need to support.
AI traffic is more dynamic, distributed, and sensitive to latency and performance. It also introduces new challenges around visibility, prioritization, and governance.
AI application classification and shadow AI control: Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN enables organizations to move beyond simply transporting AI traffic—to understanding and managing it intelligently.
It starts with visibility, where AI applications are automatically identified and classified across cloud, edge, and hybrid environments.
- With that visibility, organizations can apply intent
- Differentiate between business-critical AI workloads and non-critical usage
- Apply policies that optimize performance and enforce governance
Security is built in, with Zero Trust enforcement applied directly to AI traffic and the ability to redirect traffic to Cisco Secure Access for deeper inspection when needed.
The outcome is a WAN that not only carries AI traffic, but continuously optimizes and secures it as usage grows.
New AI Assistant in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN
As enterprise networks become more dynamic, agile, and AI‑driven, operating and managing them becomes increasingly complex. Operations teams need faster, simpler ways to manage and troubleshoot their environments.
The AI Assistant in Catalyst SD-WAN (supported from the 20.15 SD-WAN Manager release) brings generative AI directly into network operations, enabling teams to interact with their network using natural language. Whether it’s troubleshooting issues, monitoring performance, searching documentation, or managing TAC cases, teams can quickly access insights and take action—without navigating multiple tools.
Common use cases include:
- Faster troubleshooting and root cause analysis
- Network planning and optimization
- Contextual documentation search
- Simplified TAC case management
Instead of digging through dashboards, teams can simply ask:
“How is my network performing?”
“Show me top-used applications.”
“Based on my flows, do you recommend enabling TCP optimization?”
The result is faster issue resolution, easier access to insights, and a shift toward more efficient, AI-powered network operations.
Neocloud connectivity for AI workloads: AI is driving demand for access to distributed GPU infrastructure and emerging neocloud environments.
With Catalyst SD-WAN integrated with Megaport AI Exchange, organizations can securely connect to AI data centers, GPU-as-a-Service providers, and leading public clouds such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.
This enables:
- On-demand, high-performance connectivity to AI workloads
- Optimized routing and reduced latency
- Consistent security policies across environments
Organizations gain the flexibility to scale AI workloads dynamically while maintaining performance and control—unlocking faster innovation and more efficient resource utilization.
Building what’s next in networking
The shift is already underway—from applications to AI, from connectivity to experience, and toward more unified, simplified platforms. What matters most now is delivering these capabilities in a way that is simple, scalable, and built for what’s next.
Cisco SD-WAN continues to evolve to meet these needs—reducing complexity, strengthening security, and delivering consistent, high-performance experiences across environments, so teams can innovate with confidence.
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