Cisco State of AI Security 2026: MCP Is "Woefully Insecure"

Cisco's second annual report declares MCP and agent communication protocols the dominant AI risk for 2026. The report documents real-world attacks including a malicious MCP package masquerading as a Postmark email integration that BCC'd every email to an attacker-controlled address. Cisco warns that AI's "connective tissue" — MCP, tool registries, context brokers — has created "a vast and often unmonitored attack surface." They expect nation-state AI abuse techniques to trickle down into "automated or custom agentic services on the dark web that can be rented to perform end-to-end hacks." Separately, Cisco AI Defense's MCP Catalog and AI BOM represent the first enterprise vendor tooling specifically for MCP governance. Cisco Blog | Cybersecurity Dive