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What Changed
Risk factors · Sep 5, 2024 → Sep 3, 2025
123 added · 128 removed between the two most recent 10-Ks. The risks a company starts — or stops — disclosing are often the story.
Newly disclosed
During fiscal 2025, we introduced the Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches with a new class of intelligent networking silicon alongside embedded Data Processing Units (DPUs), representing our new vision for AI data center designs.
For example, if we do not timely introduce products related to these markets, or if such products or offerings that ultimately succeed in these markets are based on technology, or an approach to technology, that differs from ours, our business could be harmed.
Our customers continue to focus on modernizing their infrastructure with a focus on speed, agility, productivity, innovation and energy efficien cy. 1 Table of Contents Cybersecurity With the rapid growth in AI, modern applications, hyper-distributed architecture and increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks, customers see cybersecurity as a top priority.
To help deliver on them, we are bringing together the power of our portfolio, which we refer to as One Cisco, which provides three key outcomes to our customers: i) AI-ready data centers, ii) future-proofed workplaces, and iii) digital resilience.
Whether customers need to modernize parts of their existing infrastructure or power new, massive AI workloads, Cisco brings together a wide array of infrastructure (across networking, compute, storage, and silicon) with unified management across traditional and AI workloads, and security from on-premise to cloud to power AI-ready data centers.
We have been integrating Cisco Extended Detection and Response (XDR) with 3 Table of Contents Splunk Enterprise Security, to create a unified and highly effective solution to help prevent, detect, and respond to sophisticated cyber threats.
With AI-driven insights at their core, our observability solutions help organizations see, understand and improve every digital experience, and help to ensure seamless connectivity and proactive issue resolution across complex, modern environments.
AI presents risks and challenges and may result in unintended consequences, including inadvertent disclosure or misuse of intellectual property, confidential, personal, and/or competitive information, that could affect our reputation, our further AI development or our and our customers’ adoption and use of this technology.
AI-related issues, deficiencies and/or failures could also give rise to legal and/or regulatory action (including with respect to proposed legislation regulating AI in jurisdictions such as the European Union and others, and as a result of new and different applications of existing and new data protection, privacy, intellectual property, and other laws); damage our reputation; or otherwise materially harm our business.
The process of developing new technology, including more programmable, flexible and virtual networks, and technology related to other market transitions— such as AI, security, observability, and cloud— is complex and uncertain, and if we fail to accurately predict customers’ changing needs and emerging technological trends our business could be harmed.
We are dedicated to continuous innovation, with significant investments in cloud-based security, AI-driven threat detection, and end-to-end security architectures designed to help customers proactively safeguard their most critical assets.
Cisco Hypershield, our cloud-native and AI-powered approach to highly distributed security for AI-scale data centers that is built into the fabric of the network, is the first service offering available embedded on these new switches.
No longer disclosed
The contents of our Purpose Report, our ESG Reporting Hub and related supplemental information are not incorporated by reference into this Annual Report on Form 10-K or in any other report or document we file with the SEC. 10 Table of Contents Information about our Executive Officers The following table shows the name, age, and position as of August 31, 2024 of each of our executive officers: Name Age Position with the Company Charles H.
With our acquisition of Splunk in the third quarter of fiscal 2024, we have begun to integrate our solutions, starting with Cisco Extended Detection and Response (XDR) and Splunk Enterprise Security.
Steele joined Cisco as Executive Vice President and General Manager, Splunk upon the close of Cisco’s acquisition of Splunk in March 2024, and was promoted to President, Go-to-Market in May 2024.
For example, in recent periods, there was a market shortage of semiconductor and other component supply which affected lead times, the cost of that supply, and our ability to meet customer demand for our products.
We are integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into our product portfolios across networking, security, collaboration and observability to simplify how our technology is delivered, managed and optimized and to help customers maximize the business value of their technology investments and accelerate their digital transformation.
Impairment of that trust, or foreign regulatory actions taken in response to reports of certain intelligence gathering methods of the U.S. government, could affect the demand for our products from customers outside of the United States and could have a negative impact on our operating results.
This product category includes the Splunk Platform and Splunk Security offerings after the acquisition of Splunk, although the Splunk Platform has use cases that can also be applicable for Observability offerings.
Compared with other customers, service providers are more likely to require network design, deployment, and support services because of the greater scale and higher complexity of their networks, whose requirements are addressed, we believe, by our architectural approach. 4 Table of Contents Sales Overview As of the end of fiscal 2024, our worldwide sales and marketing functions consisted of approximately 28,000 employees, including managers, sales representatives, and technical support personnel.
Based on our fiscal 2023 data, our global employee base was comprised of 29% women, 71% men and 0.1% nonbinary, and our U.S. employee base was comprised of the following ethnicities: 48.2% White/Caucasian, 33.5% Asian, 6.5% Hispanic/Latino, 5.6% African American/Black, 2.0% two or more races (not Hispanic or Latino), 0.3% American Indian or Alaska Native, 0.2% Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander, and 3.7% prefer to not to disclose/unknown.
(“Citrix”) from September 2011 to October 2014, and in a variety of other leadership roles after joining Citrix in March 2000, including as Vice President and Managing Director for EMEA and Vice President and General Manager of Citrix’s virtualization systems group.
During the first nine months of fiscal 2024, we experienced a decline in product demand resulting in a decrease of revenue as customers continued to scrutinize spend as they needed additional time to implement elevated levels of product shipments received in prior quarters.
For example, by using these powerful analytics, we are able to test for pay parity on a regular basis, and when gaps are found, we strive to correct them.