HPE Security in the Al Era: Zero Trust and Al-powered Threat Defense

Madani Adjali of HPE Networking introduces the company’s SASE and security portfolio, spanning SD-WAN, SSE, network access control, and firewall. The session previews HPE’s Security Field Day agenda on zero trust and AI-powered threat defense, covering Unified SASE, AI-native operations with EdgeConnect, Central NAC for AI infrastructure, and firewall integration with existing SecOps workflows. Adjali, vice president of product management for the SASE and security portfolio, opened HPE Networking’s presentation at Security Field Day 16. He framed the day around two themes: AI for security and security for AI.

Adjali noted that this was HPE’s return to Security Field Day as a unified company, about a year after its previous appearance, and he reviewed what the team had shipped since then. Early in the year, HPE launched the SRX 400 and 440 firewalls at RSA. The company also introduced HPE Threat Labs and deliberately branded it without the “networking” label so that its research would reach beyond the networking world. In June, HPE launched Unified SASE at Discover. Adjali called the Discover demo a lightweight version and promised a much deeper look for this audience. The newest item was an announcement made that same week that brings EdgeConnect into HPE’s full-stack deployments, and the delegates were the first audience to see it.

Adjali then outlined the four sessions that followed. The first covered reducing exposure with Unified SASE. The second extended AI-native operations across the full stack, with a guest from HPE’s campus and branch team on hand for questions beyond pure security. The third looked at how network access control can help secure emerging AI infrastructure, including AI agents connecting to the network. The final session, on fighting zero-day threats with AI, departed from the usual product demo. Instead of a web UI, it showed a SecOps practitioner reaching HPE firewall capabilities through their own tooling and chatbots. Adjali described this as the new reality, because customers increasingly want native access to security systems so they can build them into the workflows they already use.