Hi everyone. Welcome to the Con 42 Machine Learning Conference. I'm Shania Psar, a senior product manager at Cisco Systems, and I'm really excited to be here with all of you. Today. I'll be talking about the convergence of networking and security, a topic that's more relevant than ever as AI and ML continue to evolve, so do the threats that they introduce. Addressing these challenges requires a unified approach, bringing networking and security together to build resilient and intelligent infrastructures. In today's digital landscape, networking and security can no longer be different silos. By converging these domains, we create intelligent, automated, and self defending infrastructures. The integration is not only enhancing protection against increasingly sophisticated threats, but it's also enabling enterprises to move faster, innovate more efficiently, and respond dynamically to changing business needs. Ultimately, this convergence is key to achieving resilient operations and sustainable competitive advantage in an ever evolving digital world. So let's dive right into it now. Traditionally, networking and security teams operate in isolation, creating fragmented systems that often left organizations vulnerable and slow to respond. Security policies were inconsistent. Incidents took longer to detect resolution. And this led to higher business risk. Today we are moving towards a converged approach, uniting these two critical functions into one cohesive framework by integrating security directly into your network infrastructure. The organization is achieving unified visibility, faster detection, automated responses, and this is significantly improving that ability and resilience across these evolving threats. Now, I wanted to give some, examples of what kind of business impacts are possible. By integrating networking and security together. So for example, right? You can see a reduction in your breach related costs by an average of 15%, and that directly reduces financial risk. Additionally, integrating these two can accelerate threat containment. It can also lead to. An improvement in managing security incidents resulting in faster resolutions and streamlined operations. So it is definitely securing your business and also empowering it. It's reducing your risk and improving your agility. I wanna talk about a few key technologies. We've seen evolve over the years. Let's talk about four key technologies here. First, let's start with software defined networking, where your dynamically routing traffic based on realtime security needs, ensuring performance and protection. Secure Access Service Edge, SSE, which is my favorite topic. Unify secure security and networking at the edge, enabling consistent policy enforcement wherever users connect. Zero trust architecture enforces identity verification for every single user and device, reducing lateral risk. And finally, AI powered security, which brings intelligent threat detection to the forefront using machine learning to spot anomalies and automate responses. This is enabling proactive defense at scale. Together, these pillars are making convergence possible, and they're making it transformative. Let's talk about the market growth a little bit. The SDN market is projected to grow from 10.5 billion in 2023 to 15.8 billion. The SSE market is also exploding. It's almost tripling in size from about a billion to 2.4 billion in just five years. Together these trends are fueling demand for converge solutions, unlocking massive new market opportunities at the intersection of agility, scalability, and cyber resilience. So what all have to be done as part of this organizational transformation? So true convergence is not just about technologies, as you might know, it demands organizational transformation. It starts at the foundation with consolidated infrastructure where hardware and software are unified to create a co cohesive digital environment. On top of that, you have integrated tool sets that bridge networking and security workflows and reduce silos to enable efficiency. Next you have collaborative teams bringing together cross-functional stakeholders with shared accountability and success metrics. And at the very top is where strategic alignment ensures that business and security goals are synchronized, making cybersecurity not just a function, but a driver of enterprise growth. This pyramid is showing you how organizational transformation happens. And it's very impact driven from what we've seen so far. The promise of networking and security convergence is clear, and we also looked at how this can be achieved, but. Obviously it's easier said than done, isn't it? Execution is not without, its without its hurdles. Firstly, there's a skills gap. This is literally the biggest concern out there. This is basically a lack of professionals who understand both domains deeply enough to lead the integration efforts. Then there is organizational res resistance where siloed teams cling to traditional roles and processes, making cross-functional collaboration very difficult. There's legacy infrastructure with which further complicates things, and there's outdated systems that aren't designed to support converged architectures. And finally, we've all heard it budget constraints that often delay progress and there are. Just other costs that compete with priorities, even in the long term. The even if the ROI is compelling, it's really hard to get that budget. So addressing all of these challenges is one of, one of the great ways where you can make sure that your execution can happen. Now let's talk about a little bit about the cloud integration strategy. A successful cloud integration strategy starts with visibility comprehensively assessing your cloud footprint to understand the services data flows and their security needs. Then it's critical to establish multi-layer security parameters that consistently enforce access policies across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Organizations must also deploy converged control systems that unify network and security management into a single coherent framework. And finally, ongoing success depends on continuous performance monitoring. Using analytics to proactively optimize both security posture and network efficiency. This cycle ensures resiliency, agility, and control in any cloud environment. A successful implementation of converged networking and security begins with assessment and planning. Analyzing your current infrastructure, identifying vulnerabilities, aligning integration goals with business outcomes. From there, team and technology alignment is critical. Breaking down those silos, implementing unified platforms, training cross-functional teams with the right skillsets, and then finally, implementation and optimization. Deploy solutions in phases to minimize disruption. Use analytics to measure impact and establish continuous feedback loops for refinement. This roadmap ensures that transformation is both strategic and sustainable. I wanted to give you a few examples of organizations in specific verticals that have actually achieved this. For example, in the financial services sector, a Fortune 500 bank was able to cut security incidents by 35% while also improving their transaction speeds. And this was all due to their integrated software defined networking. In healthcare, there was a major hospital that reduced breach containment from over 48 hours to just under 60 minutes. And this was by deploying SASE across its network and securing their sensitive patient data. And the final example here is in manufacturing where a global leader protected their critical OT systems and achieved 99.8% uptime by applying zero trust principles across their infrastructures. So these are not just theoretical examples, right? They are actually delivering measurable impact across all the industries. To build a resilient digital future organization's mistake, a strategic and phased approach. Start by assessing your readiness, understand your integration maturity, and identify initiatives with clear business impact. It's like they say start small, but think big, right? So pilot targeted projects that deliver value quickly while laying the foundation for scalable transformation. Foster collaboration across your networking and security teams by unifying goals, breaking down silos, and finally embrace continuous evolution. Adapt to emerging threats and technologies through regular strategic reviews. It's not just a one time project, it's a living process that drives lasting agility, security, and innovation. Thank you all so much for being here and listening to me. I definitely enjoyed being here and talking to you all. See you next time. Thank you so much. I.