Cisco IoT

Cisco IoT is the industrial and IoT networking division of Cisco Systems, the world’s largest networking equipment vendor. Rather than competing as an application platform, Cisco’s IoT strategy centres on the network and security layer: ruggedised industrial routers and switches (the Catalyst IE and IR series), industrial wireless access points, and edge-compute gateways that connect field devices reliably in harsh environments such as factories, utilities, oil and gas sites, and transportation networks. Cisco pairs this hardware with software for network visibility and OT (operational technology) security, an increasingly important category as industrial networks converge with corporate IT and become targets for cyberattacks. Cisco’s Cyber Vision product, for instance, gives plant operators visibility into previously invisible OT assets and traffic. Because nearly every IoT deployment needs reliable, secure connectivity regardless of which cloud platform sits above it, Cisco occupies a foundational layer that touches almost the entire IoT stack rather than competing head-on with AWS IoT or Azure IoT for application development. This makes Cisco a recurring reference point in IoT security coverage, particularly around OT/IT convergence risk — a topic of growing relevance to Indian critical infrastructure operators as smart grid and smart city rollouts expand network attack surfaces.