HPE Security Reducing Exposure in the AI Era with Unified SASE

Ram Krishnan of HPE Networking demonstrates how the Unified SASE orchestrator brings SD-WAN connectivity, on-premises firewalling, and cloud security into a single management interface. The session covers intent-based networking and security policy, SSE connectors embedded in EdgeConnect gateways for zero trust access, secure web gateway protection for remote users, and an AI copilot for configuration hardening and troubleshooting. Krishnan, a product manager, presented the live demo at Security Field Day 16.

Krishnan started with connectivity. Default business intent overlays turn application priorities into tunnels, routing, QoS, shaping, and steering as soon as a device is onboarded. Bonding policy combines broadband and LTE links into one logical tunnel and chooses a path for each packet. The same intent model drives the global firewall policy. In one example, an IoT device’s DNS query was blocked for matching a suspicious domain even though a rule permitted DNS. The biggest change is that the SSE connector, formerly a separate access connector, now runs inside every EdgeConnect gateway, which turns an SD-WAN fleet into a set of ZTNA connectors. Connectors make outbound connections to the cloud, which brokers access. A contractor reached a private web server from an ordinary Brave browser without a VPN or an inbound firewall opening. For managed laptops, an agent adds posture checks and SSL-inspected URL filtering, which the demo used to block a gambling site.

The AI copilot compares live configuration against best-practice guides and labels settings secure, insecure, or needing attention. Krishnan said it currently advises rather than acts. One-click quarantine or hardening is the vision, but he doubted enterprises are ready for it yet. Delegates welcomed the unified security logs, which combine appliance and cloud events and let operators pivot between user and application views. One delegate called the change a game changer compared with the visibility of the earlier platform. On deployment, the cloud service is pure SaaS and keeps each region’s data in place to meet GDPR requirements. Administrators can still pin applications to US region connectors for traveling users if they accept the added latency.