Comprehensive view of technical insights and vendor strategies
This report analyzes campus network security’s shift in the AI agent era. Networks are evolving from “access networks” to “Agent Runtime Networks,” entering an Agent-Native phase. It proposes a three-tier model: Access Edge (agent identity), Network Edge (communication control), and Service Edge (task governance). The strategic conclusion: campus security is moving from access control to behavior control, re-establishing the campus network as the core of enterprise security infrastructure.
RSAC 2026 signals security’s shift from AI-assisted to AI-native, pivoting to governing AI behavior. AI becomes a new attack surface, and AI Agents join users, devices, and applications as the fourth entity. Market competition is shifting from point products to integrated platforms. Leading vendors are building unified control planes. The three-year roadmap: AI-enabled → AI application → AI agent → autonomous security. The core battleground is controlling AI traffic and behavior. Agent Security will emerge as a critical new category.
AI infrastructure is undergoing a triple reconstruction: energy-compute synergy, endogenous security architecture, and workload-aware networking. Competition has shifted from compute stacking to full-stack platform definition and ecosystem lock-in.
