One of the market’s most comprehensive annual vendor-agnostic studies found that rapid cloud expansion, distributed workloads, and AI-driven traffic patterns are driving increased demand for unified policy control and end-to-end transparency.
Global cybersecurity leader AlgoSec has released its annual State of Network Security Report, providing a comprehensive vendor-agnostic analysis of today’s network security landscape.
The report identifies a decisive shift in how organizations are responding to network evolution and hybrid architecture sprawl, with the focus shifting back towards consolidation; defined by unification, automation and control as businesses look to manage visibility of risk and resilience posture. Based on comparative year-on-year findings, AlgoSec’s research includes over 500 responses from security, network and cloud professionals across 28 countries and evaluates market leaders including AWS, Cisco, Microsoft Azure, GCP, Check Point, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet and more.
Key findings from the report include:
- AI-powered threats and defences go mainstream – Artificial intelligence has become both the newest threat vector and the next frontier of defence. For the first time, AlgoSec’s research asked how organizations are adjusting to the rise of AI-powered attacks. The majority (65%) have already adapted their strategies, with 23.6% making major structural changes and 40.9% implementing moderate adjustments.
- Cloud firewall strategies prioritize consolidation – The move toward cloud-based firewalls continues, but with a change in tone. Nearly a quarter (24%) of respondents plan to move primarily to cloud firewalls over the next two years, confirming that cloud-native controls are no longer a consideration, but a baseline expectation.
- Security becomes the deciding factor in cloud platform selection – The rise of AI-driven workloads, compliance requirements and cross-platform orchestration has made security the critical benchmark for platform selection, with 54.7% of organizations stating that security capabilities carry the most weight when selecting a cloud platform.
- SD-WAN further cements its role – As organizations expand their hybrid environments and distributed workforces, the demand for secure, high-performance connectivity has solidified SD-WAN’s role. Fortinet (31%) has become the most widely used SD-WAN solution while Cisco (30.7%) remains a close second.
- SASE moves from exploration to standardization – For the third year running, the share of organizations without a SASE solution has declined, down to 27.5% from 40% in 2024. This consistent decrease signals that SASE adoption is no longer exploratory, but a planned progression for most enterprises.
“Compared to last year, we are now seeing a transition from experimentation to optimization,” said Eran Shiff, Chief Product Officer at AlgoSec. “After several years of rapid expansion across multi-cloud environments, AI-powered operations and hybrid architectures, organizations are entering a new phase of consolidation and control. Our survey reveals a collective recalibration, with organizations moving away from tool proliferation toward unified management, shared visibility and measurable automation.”
The full report can be accessed here.