This year’s RSA Conference in San Francisco has once again underscored how critical it is for organisations to stay ahead of rapidly evolving cyber threats. One of the standout innovations from the three day event, was Cisco’s Hybrid Mesh Firewall strategy—a transformational approach to enterprise security infrastructure.

Authored by Gísli Helgason CTO Office - Network & Security

Cisco’s Hybrid Mesh Firewall

Cisco is redefining the firewall as more than a standalone device—it's now a dynamic, interconnected security fabric. Their Hybrid Mesh Firewall architecture is a game changer, that goes way beyond the Gartner definition of a Hybrid Mesh Firewall. Key benefits  include:

• Unified Security management with Security Cloud Control: Cisco’s Hybrid Mesh Firewall brings together all firewall instances—physical, virtual, and cloud-based—under Security Cloud Control, enabling consistent policy management, unified visibility, and streamlined operations across complex environments.
• Hypershield with Autonomous Segmentation: Cisco’s Hypershield delivers virtual patching for immediate protection against vulnerabilities, and now includes autonomous segmentation, which intelligently isolates affected areas of the network to contain threats and limit their impact.
• Deeper Threat Detection with Cisco EVE and SnortML: Cisco’s Encrypted Visibility Engine (EVE) provides deep traffic analysis without decryption, allowing secure insight into encrypted traffic. Combined with SnortML, which uses machine learning for adaptive threat detection.
• Network-Embedded Security and Third-party Integration: Cisco elevates network switches into security enforcers—distributing intelligence and response at the infrastructure level using DPU’s.
• Third-party firewall support: Support for third-party firewalls ensures interoperability, offering organisations flexibility across varied environments and provides investment protection while you migrate from NGFW to Hybrid Mesh Firewall architectures.
• Flexible Procurement with Suite Licensing: Cisco’s Suite Licensing model simplifies the procurement process by bundling key security solutions under a flexible, scalable agreement—giving customers predictable costs and easier adoption of new capabilities.

As Rick Miles (VP, Cloud and Network Security) from Cisco wisely noted during the conference, “Our competitors aren’t the enemy—threat actors are.” It’s a reminder that collaboration and comprehensive security are key to staying protected. Cisco’s innovations position their Hybrid Mesh Firewall as the foundational security fabric for tomorrow’s networks—a vision that closely aligns with CAE’s strategy of delivering future-ready infrastructure.

Collaborating with Leading Security Innovators

In addition to engaging with Cisco, our RSA 2025 agenda included strategic meetings with a range of leading security technology vendors including Radware, Horizon3.ai, Proficio, and others. These conversations centered around threat detection, offensive security, cloud-native protection, and emerging best practices for enterprise resilience.

• Horizon3.ai: we were impressed with their autonomous approach to security testing, offering automated attack capabilities that help customers identify and fix vulnerabilities before attackers do. This aligns strongly with CAE’s vision of helping customers move from reactive to predictive security postures.
• Radware: showcased technologies designed to safeguard digital infrastructure against modern attack vectors—from volumetric DDoS to encrypted threats—supporting CAE’s efforts to protect our customers’ mission-critical services.
• Proficio presented their advanced Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services, which offer 24/7 monitoring, threat hunting, and rapid response capabilities. This will be especially valuable to those looking to enhance their cyber resilience without the overhead of managing a full in-house SOC.

These engagements reaffirmed that innovation is thriving across the cybersecurity ecosystem. Our partnerships with these vendors will continue to evolve as we co-develop tailored solutions for CAE’s customers, with specific focus on sectors like healthcare and retail.

Looking ahead

The insights from RSA 2025 affirm that innovation in security must be ongoing, interconnected, and deeply embedded across all layers of the IT stack.

Cisco’s Hybrid Mesh Firewall, alongside insights from top-tier security vendors, represents exactly the kind of forward-thinking solutions we will continue to deliver. With the threat landscape evolving daily, our role is to ensure our customers are not only protected—but positioned to thrive.

Find out more on our approach to security