Cisco Launches AI-Powered SOC Showcase in Toronto: What Operations Leaders Need to Know
Cisco has added an AI-Powered Security Operations Centre (SOC) showcase to its Toronto Innovation Centre, giving Canadian organizations a hands-on way to pressure-test defenses against modern threats. The experience simulates industry-specific attacks and layered defenses, so operations leaders can see what works, what breaks, and how to respond faster.
The launch marks Cybersecurity Awareness Month and the 10-year anniversary of the Toronto Innovation Centre. It also reinforces ongoing investment in Canadian engineering and R&D through Cisco's Country Digital Acceleration program.
Why this matters for Operations
- Cut dwell time and reduce MTTR with AI-assisted detection, triage, and investigation.
- Stress-test runbooks against realistic attack chains, from identity to cloud.
- Improve cross-team coordination (SecOps, NetOps, ITOps, Cloud Ops) with shared situational awareness.
- Maintain uptime and service continuity during incidents through layered controls and clearer signals.
- Do more with lean teams while hiring lags and critical roles remain unfilled.
Inside the SOC showcase
- Realistic, sector-specific threat scenarios that mirror current adversary techniques.
- Adversary emulation to expose process gaps and tooling blind spots.
- Layered defenses across identity, network, endpoint, and cloud-linked by high-fidelity detections.
- Threat intelligence from Cisco Talos to improve signal quality and context.
- Internet and network visibility via ThousandEyes to catch external dependencies impacting user experience.
- Analytics and investigation workflows with Splunk to speed response and reporting.
The need is clear: 80% of Canadian organizations reported AI-related security incidents in the past year, while only 41% say employees understand AI threats and risks. The showcase helps leaders see how integrated solutions detect, investigate, and respond end to end-before those gaps turn into outages.
"The launch of our AI-Powered Security Operations Centre signifies an important step in fortifying and investing in Canada's cybersecurity infrastructure of tomorrow," said Raj Juneja, President of Cisco Canada. "This showcase is not just about seeing the future; it's about understanding it and building it, with AI at the forefront."
Canadian investment and impact
This initiative builds on three decades of Cisco's work in Canada. Several featured solutions were developed by engineering teams in-country, and the Toronto Innovation Centre has supported experimentation and co-creation with AI, data analytics, cybersecurity, and networking for ten years.
"Building strong cybersecurity defences within organizations is critical to the economic and societal prosperity of Canada," said Wayne Cuervo, Director of Cisco's Digital Impact Office. "With this investment, we're helping organizations solve some of their most pressing business challenges."
How Operations leaders can use this
- Bring SecOps, NetOps, ITOps, and Cloud Ops to a joint session; define two or three attack scenarios that match your environment.
- Set clear success criteria: target MTTD/MTTR, false positive reduction, and containment SLAs.
- Run tabletop plus live detection tests; track which alerts, logs, and playbooks actually moved the needle.
- Map findings to specific actions: control tuning, log source gaps, automation opportunities, and role clarity during incidents.
- Prioritize quick wins (days to weeks) and sequence deeper work (quarterly roadmaps).
Next steps
- Schedule a visit to the Toronto Innovation Centre and request scenarios relevant to your sector and tech stack.
- Use the session to validate runbooks, escalation paths, and on-call readiness under realistic pressure.
- Close the skills gap with focused upskilling for your team. Explore job-focused AI and security courses here: Complete AI Training - Courses by Job.
About Cisco
Cisco is a global technology leader in secure connectivity. For more than 40 years, it has connected organizations and protected users, data, and applications. With AI-enabled security solutions and services, Cisco helps customers improve productivity and strengthen digital resilience across identity, network, endpoint, and cloud.
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