Traffic patterns are shifting, agent deployments are multiplying, and cloud environments keep expanding. The point tools enterprises use to manage each layer are not keeping pace. As organizations embrace digital transformation, the complexity of securing distributed networks has grown exponentially. Traditional security architectures—built around a perimeter that no longer exists—are giving way to more dynamic, cloud-centric models. Yet the tools used to enforce security often remain siloed, creating blind spots and increasing operational overhead.
Versa Networks is addressing those challenges with three coordinated updates to its VersaONE Universal SASE Platform. The first is a Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) capability that brings cloud risk visibility into the same view as access security. The second is a significant update of its Concerto orchestration platform, version 13.1.1. The third is an AI agent trust and verification framework due later this month. These updates are designed to provide a unified approach to security, reducing the complexity that has become a hallmark of modern enterprise IT.
Research Highlights the Cost of Fragmentation
New research backs the strategic rationale. Versa’s inaugural State of SASE + AI Report, a survey of 525 senior IT and security decision-makers at U.S. enterprises, found that 35% of organizations suffered a breach in the past year tied to coordination gaps between networking and security teams. Nearly three quarters (73%) say technical integration complexity has delayed or derailed a critical project. Some 99% have named convergence a strategic priority, yet only 30% have done it. The disconnect between strategic intent and operational reality underscores the urgency of platforms that can bridge the gap between networking and security domains.
The report covers organizations across financial services, retail, energy, manufacturing, healthcare, technology and government. Key findings include: 53% report higher operational costs from managing redundant tools; 73% say technical integration complexity has delayed or derailed a critical project; 99% have named convergence a strategic priority, but only 30% have implemented shared ownership of SASE strategy; 95% say AI is forcing networking and security teams to collaborate more closely; 58% cite strengthening security posture as the top driver for convergence, compared to 19% who cited lowering total cost of ownership. Organizations running 50 or more vendors are nearly twice as likely to report delayed application rollouts as those with leaner stacks (61% vs. 34%) and more likely to report inconsistent policy enforcement (57% vs. 40%).
The report also surfaces a shadow AI problem. More than 80% of organizations say AI is in use somewhere in their environment, yet fewer than 20% said they knew what it was being used for. This lack of visibility not only raises security concerns but also complicates compliance and governance efforts. As AI agents become more autonomous, the ability to monitor and control their actions becomes critical.
Improving Orchestration with Concerto Update
The complexity findings in the research point directly at an orchestration problem, and it is one Versa says it has been spending significant engineering resources to solve. “This is where we’ve been spending a lot of engineering cycles on the management and simplifying the complexity, because what we heard from most users is, ‘hey, I’ve got different islands of policy,'” said Kelly Ahuja, CEO of Versa Networks.
Concerto 13.1.1 is the response. The release redesigns the SD-WAN configuration experience and unifies security and authentication profiles across SD-WAN and SSE, collapsing those islands into a single construct. “When you set a policy for a user, whether it’s a site or a cloud, it doesn’t matter where the user is, you actually do it once, and you do it in a consistent way,” Ahuja said. The release also adds hierarchical policy templates, letting organizations define a master policy and extend subsets to different user groups and departments without rebuilding from scratch. The target is enterprise-grade SD-WAN without the staffing overhead that has traditionally come with it. “Getting that scale, supporting that scale, but also simplifying how they kind of configure it is absolutely crucial,” Ahuja added.
This update is particularly relevant for enterprises that have struggled with the complexity of managing multiple SD-WAN and security policies across diverse locations and cloud environments. By unifying the policy framework, Concerto 13.1.1 reduces the risk of misconfigurations and ensures consistent enforcement, whether traffic originates from a branch office, a remote worker, or a cloud workload.
Closing the Two-Portal Problem: CSPM Joins VersaONE
Policy configuration is one layer of fragmentation. Cloud risk visibility is another. Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) continuously monitors cloud infrastructure for misconfigurations, compliance gaps and security risks. Google’s $32 billion acquisition of Wiz earlier this year underscored how contested that space has become. Versa says its CSPM plans predate the deal. “We were listening to customers, looking at what they’re doing, as opposed to seeing what else is out there in the market,” Ahuja said. “It was already on our plans. We were just kind of working our way through it.”
Most enterprises run ZTNA or a secure internet gateway for user and device posture and a separate CSPM tool for cloud configuration risk, managed by separate teams with no shared context. Versa is adding CSPM directly to VersaONE, extending access security into continuous cloud risk visibility across AWS, Azure, GCP and OCI, with telemetry feeding into Concerto alongside access risk data. “While the industry has been talking about unifying risk intelligence for years, everyone still kind of relies on two different portals, one for doing your ZTNA or secure internet, and then second for cloud,” Ahuja said. “And there’s no way to really kind of share that context and really kind of pull it together. This is what we’re actually solving for.”
By integrating CSPM into the SASE platform, Versa enables security teams to correlate cloud configuration risks with user and device posture, providing a more comprehensive view of an organization’s security stance. This approach reduces the time spent toggling between tools and helps prioritize remediation efforts based on a unified risk score.
AI Agents Are the Next Enforcement Problem
CSPM extends the platform’s visibility into cloud infrastructure. The next challenge is what happens when AI agents start changing that infrastructure. “One single user prompt can actually trigger many agents coming up, and then they can actually start to make changes inside your environment to policies and configuration, and many of them are invisible to the operator,” Ahuja said. Versa’s response, due around May 21, is a trust and verification framework that applies policy-based access controls to agents the same way they apply to users and devices, functioning as a verification gateway inside the management and orchestration layer. Putting a human in the review path is not a viable answer at this scale. “Putting a human in the loop will only slow things down, because all of a sudden, you’ve got lots of things that you’re trying to do, but somebody has to observe them and do them,” Ahuja said.
For the framework itself, Versa is drawing on what it has already built for user and device access. “We’re looking at all the things that have been done for user and device, sort of secure access from those and seeing which one of those can be applied to agentic stuff as well,” Ahuja said. This approach leverages existing investments in identity and access management while extending them to the emerging category of AI agents. The framework is designed to authenticate agents, authorize their actions, and audit their behaviour, ensuring that even as agentic AI becomes more prevalent, organizations retain control over their environments.
The update also addresses the growing concern around AI governance. With regulatory frameworks like the EU AI Act taking shape, enterprises need to demonstrate that they can monitor and control AI-driven actions. Versa’s framework provides the technical foundation for such compliance, logging all agent activities and enforcing predefined policies that prevent unauthorized changes.
Broader Implications for Enterprise Security
The coordinated updates reflect a broader trend in the security industry: the move toward platforms that unify networking and security functions. As the research indicates, the cost of fragmentation is high—both in terms of direct breaches and operational inefficiency. By offering CSPM, improved orchestration, and AI agent controls within a single platform, Versa is positioning itself as a one-stop shop for enterprises looking to simplify their security stacks.
Moreover, the emphasis on AI agent controls is timely. As organizations increasingly deploy AI for automation, analytics, and customer-facing applications, the ability to govern these agents becomes a competitive differentiator. Versa’s framework allows enterprises to adopt AI without sacrificing security, potentially accelerating their digital transformation efforts.
In an industry where convergence has been a talking point for years, Versa’s latest moves demonstrate that practical solutions are finally arriving. The challenge now will be for enterprises to adopt these integrated platforms at scale—something the research suggests is still a work in progress.
Source: Network World News