Cisco Fortifies AI Strategy While Enforcing Trademarks Against Domain Abuses
Jul/07/2025
Cisco, the San Jose-based networking titan born out of Silicon Valley’s 1984 boom, is vigorously expanding beyond its traditional routing and switching expertise into cybersecurity, observability, and artificial intelligence, having posted nearly $54 billion in fiscal 2024 revenue. Central to this transformation is its $28 billion acquisition of Splunk, aimed at blending powerful data analytics with Cisco’s infrastructure to anticipate and counter advanced cybersecurity threats using generative AI. Meanwhile, Cisco has taken a hard line on brand protection, prevailing in several recent WIPO cases that highlight the global misuse of its trademarks. Cisco reclaimed routercisco.com after demonstrating it had been exploited to lure consumers to counterfeit products. Cisco also secured the transfer of ciscoswitchdna.com, a domain operated by a Chinese enttity to falsely claiming official Cisco partnership to sell networking gear. Similarly, Cisco recovered cisco-latam.com, which had masqueraded as a Latin American Cisco certification center. These cases collectively reinforce Cisco’s defensive arsenal at a time when it faces fierce competition from Huawei, HPE, and Juniper Networks, and as global IT buyers grow wary of spending.
