Artificial Intelligence
CDW Summit 2026: Agentic AI Is Making New Demands of Your Network
At the CDW Summit 2026 in Dallas, IT experts examined the changing demands on enterprise networks arising from the increased use of agentic artificial intelligence. Not only is network traffic increasing and shifting, but AI agents are introducing new vulnerabilities and causing changes in the threat landscape. IT and cybersecurity leaders should take note and focus on improving network observability. As CDW’s Stephanie Hagopian pointed out, shadow AI is also creating new wrinkles for IT teams and making it harder for them to maintain consistent and thorough knowledge of what’s running on the network. Strong data governance and guardrails around AI use are becoming ever more critical to network security, and organizations must implement and enforce them to scale security efforts and match the machine speed of bad actors leveraging AI agents.
Participants
Mike Kraus, Vice President of Global Networking Solutions Engineering, Cisco
Stephanie Hagopian, Senior Vice President of Security and Augmented Expertise and Intelligent Staffing, CDW
Video Highlights
- Cisco’s Mike Kraus pointed out the changes in network traffic resulting from artificial intelligence use, saying it’s “not as bursty as it was in the past because agents are always operating.”
- Kraus also emphasized the critical importance of network observability. “You cannot build a secure network or an AI-ready network if you don’t know what’s happening on your network itself,” he said.
- Both Kraus and CDW’s Stephanie Hagopian discussed the need to establish guardrails around AI. Hagopian zeroed in on the specific challenges that result from “shadow AI” when guardrails aren’t developed.
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