Explore•4 min read

Broadcom Unveils AI-Ready Lateral Security and App Delivery Innovations

Organizations today are navigating a complex security and application delivery landscape. Cyber threats, including ransomware and web application attacks, are evolving by the nanosecond, with increasingly sophisticated threats targeting every layer of the enterprise.  IT teams face mounting pressure not only to defend against increasingly sophisticated attacks, but also to deliver applications with greater speed, resilience, and scalability. At the same time, the rapid advances in AI and generative AI is promising to transform how teams build, deploy, and operate next-gen agentic AI applications, creating new opportunities but also new attack surfaces.

Today at VMware Explore 2025, Broadcom is unveiling innovations from VMware vDefend and VMware Avi Load Balancer that are designed to help enterprises meet these challenges head-on.

“Enterprises shouldn’t have to choose between speed, security, and innovation, especially in the AI era,” said Umesh Mahajan, Vice President and General Manager, Application Networking and Security Division, Broadcom. “The new advancements to VMware vDefend and VMware Avi Load Balancer show how Broadcom is leading the way in delivering AI-ready security and application delivery, so customers can stay ahead of both opportunity and threat.”

Secure Private Cloud at Speed with VMware vDefend

Cyber threats aren’t just multiplying: they’re evolving in real time, often outpacing traditional defenses. This can often lead to security feeling like a game of catch-up. 

VMware vDefend simplifies how organizations achieve zero trust and private cloud security goals by cutting through complexity and providing a comprehensive lateral security implementation. At VMware Explore 2025, we’re enabling customers to not just keep up with security but come out ahead. New capabilities being added to VMware vDefend include: 

  • Micro-Segmentation Quick Start Wizard: New automation-driven workflows guide customers through a multi-stage segmentation journey, from securing foundational services in Stage 1, to establishing intelligent zone-level protections in Stage 2, to automating application-level segmentation in Stage 3 — all in weeks and months, not years.
  • Firewall Rule Analysis: Firewall Rule Analysis analyzes published Distributed Firewall (DFW) rules and identifies duplicates, redundancies, shadowed rules, contradictions, and overly permissive policies, then recommends fixes. 
  • Standalone NDR Sensor: We are extending VMware vDefend's robust threat detection capabilities to provide unparalleled visibility and protection across all types of data center traffic - workloads (virtual, container, and bare-metal) and network devices. 
  • Fileless Malware Defense: Stops stealthy, in-memory threats leveraging malicious PowerShell, VBScript, and JScript executions before they run, delivering deep visibility and forensics into attempted attacks.

Streamline App Delivery and Fortify Web App Security with VMware Avi Load Balancer

As organizations embrace the cloud and AI, they increasingly need to streamline operations, enhance efficiency, and bolster defenses against sophisticated web application security threats. VMware Avi Load Balancer is at the forefront of this transformation, leveraging AI-defined load balancing to simplify operations and accelerate application delivery. 

Today, Broadcom also announced several new innovations to VMware Avi Load Balancer, including:

  • Avi Quick Start Wizard: Cuts Day 0 deployment time for VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) compute (vCenter) and VCF networking (NSX) by multifold, with in-product guidance that reduces dozens of manual configuration inputs to just a few streamlined steps.
  • Web App Firewall Assessment: Helps customers assess risk posture of web application traffic and gain full visibility into top attacks, IP origins, and geographies before enabling it enterprise-wide.
  • Post-Quantum Crypto (PQC) Support: Adds NIST-approved PQC algorithms and HSM integration to defend against quantum-era threats and help meet compliance mandates.
  • End-to-End mutual TLS Authentication for Kubernetes: Authenticates and encrypts traffic from Gateway API to Kubernetes cluster while enabling WAF, bot detection, and HTTP security policies.

AI/GenAI Tech Previews

Customers have long used the power of AI and machine learning (ML) within VMware vDefend and VMware Avi Load Balancer to enhance cybersecurity defenses and optimize application delivery. At Explore 2025, we’re taking the next critical step and furthering VMware vDefend and VMware Avi Load Balancer innovations to improve security and operations in the age of AI. 

GenAI Assistants for More Efficient Operations 

For VMware vDefend, we recently introduced Intelligent Assist for VMware vDefend, which uses GenAI to turbocharge Threat Defense with GenAI-Driven Intelligence. Now, we are extending GenAI assistant capability for the VMware vDefend Firewall operations. GenAI Assistant for Firewall Operations simplifies operations and speeds up issue resolution by providing insights into dynamic security events like real-time policy violations or blocked applications.

On the application side, an Avi GenAI tool will integrate Generative AI technologies with VMware Avi Load Balancer's advanced analytics, providing administrators with a GenAI assistant that can dramatically simplify operations. Administrators will be able to use it for use cases including getting instant help on questions, having more efficient application performance monitoring and troubleshooting based on natural language reasoning, and stress-free upgrades with the help of guided workflows and recommended best practices. 

Intelligent Security and Load Balancing for Private AI

We are introducing VMware vDefend with VMware Cloud Foundation Private AI Foundation (PAIF). This powerful integration enables security teams to segment and safeguard every component of an agentic AI environment — from model runtimes and agent builders to indexing and retrieval systems — enabling integrity and protection from east-west threats. It also highlights, for example, how interactions between AI workloads and shared services (network services, data sources, model repositories, etc.) can be locked down.

Additionally, VMware Avi Load Balancer is also announcing support to load balance workloads on PAIF. With its integration with Kubernetes, multi-terabit performance (due to its software-defined architecture) and elastic scale-out operation is ideally suited to deliver load balancing to agentic AI workloads. 

VMware Avi Load Balancer will also be AI-optimized to scale and secure AI workloads from Day 1, with Model Context Protocol (MCP) support for reliable, session-persistent load balancing and AI-ready with other agentic AI ecosystems.

To learn more about today’s news, you can join us at VMware Explore 2025 in Las Vegas. You can also read more in the following blogs:

If you plan to attend VMware Explore 2025 either in person in Las Vegas or virtually, we encourage you to join the following sessions to learn more:

  • [NSLB1756LV] Ransomware Protection And App Delivery For The Cloud And AI Era
  • [NSLP2051LV] Securing Private AI Workloads: Combating The New Attack Surface
  • [INVB1864LV] Accelerating Firewall And Load Balancer Operations And Troubleshooting With GenAI Innovations
  • [INVB1432LV] Building Secure Private AI Deep Dive
  • [NSLB1869LV] From Zero to Hero: VMware vDefend Advanced Threat Prevention Deployment Best Practices
  • [NSLB1723LV] Avi Load Balancer Integration With VCF 9: Driving Private Cloud To New Heights
  • [NSLB1857LV] Architecting Private AI With Elastic And Secure Ingress
  • [NSLB1677LV] Avi, AKO, and AMKO: Easy Way to Build Load Balancer Services for Kubernetes Clusters
  • [NSLB1194LV] Self-Service Automation With VMware Avi Load Balancer

Editorial Notes: The information in this news release is for informational purposes only and may not be incorporated into any contract. There is no commitment or obligation to deliver any items presented herein.

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