NetFoundry

Galeal Zino, Founder and CEO

Enterprise systems are moving beyond a human-centric model, with applications, services and AI agents operating across cloud platforms, private infrastructure and partner environments. In this environment, organizations are struggling to securely connect these distributed systems without relying on complex network reconfiguration and manual controls.

While zero-trust has proven effective in securing user-to-application access, it does not fully address the growing volume of machine-to-machine and service-to-service interactions, particularly in architectures still dependent on firewalls, VPNs and ongoing network reconfiguration.

The new environment requires a different cybersecurity approach.

NetFoundry provides a software-defined zero-trust connectivity platform designed for the complexities of modern, distributed non-human workloads. These workloads require high-risk connections to third-party and public endpoints but can’t apply MFA and other security controls designed for human access.

NetFoundry enables this secure connectivity with an identity-based approach that requires no changes to existing network infrastructure and eliminates the firewall rule change management efforts currently required to secure application deployments.

“Businesses need to operate at ‘AI speed,’ and that means security and networking can’t be in the way,” says Galeal Zino, founder and CEO.

It’s overlay network is independent of the underlying network, and invisible to anyone who’s not authenticated. This means that extending connectivity no longer requires an organization to expand its attack surface. If identity and policy do not allow the interaction, no routable service path is created, making it invisible to attackers.

Identity as the New Control Plane

How does shifting from network-based controls to identity-based systems improve security outcomes?

The shift toward distributed, autonomous systems exposes a fundamental gap in how identity is managed. While users have long-established identities that can be authenticated and controlled, machines, services and workloads typically do not.

As organizations build increasingly distributed applications across cloud, on-premise, partner environments and microservice-based architectures, interactions are no longer limited to users accessing applications. Instead, machine-to-machine and service-to-service communications dominate. In this environment, the absence of a consistent machine identity introduces both security risk and operational complexity, particularly as AI systems and agents begin to initiate their own requests for data and access.

NetFoundry shifts the control plane from the network to identity, allowing organizations to meet security requirements without slowing deployment. It assigns cryptographically verifiable identity to everything—users, applications, services, devices, APIs, microservices, server workloads, IoT systems, robotics, autonomous systems and AI agents and MCP servers—creating a consistent framework for authentication and authorization, with identity defining trust across all interactions.

Applications are never exposed to the public internet, and all connections are initiated outbound over the overlay. This eliminates inbound attack surfaces and reduces exposure to external threats.

A zero-trust overlay network enables this by providing private, end-to-end encrypted connectivity with built-in resiliency, performance optimization and high availability. It can be consumed as a globally distributed service across hundreds of data centers and tier-one backbone networks, or deployed within an organization’s own environment, including on-premise and air-gapped setups.

Because the platform is entirely software-based, organizations can establish connections in minutes instead of weeks without compromising security. NetFoundry integrates identity, policy enforcement, telemetry, provisioning and orchestration into a single control plane, reducing the need for multiple point solutions.

The result is a model where teams can securely connect distributed systems, enabling them to scale operations, support autonomous systems and deploy new applications without ongoing reconfiguration.

From Bottlenecks to Business Breakthrough

Why do traditional networking approaches create delays in deploying time-sensitive AI projects?

The impact of this model becomes clear when applied to time-sensitive projects.

In one example, a major airline set out to launch an AI-powered chatbot designed to enhance operations and customer experience. Despite clear business value, the project stalled due to infrastructure and security constraints.

One barrier was data access. Critical information was distributed across environments, including Microsoft Azure, private data centers and other enterprise systems. Establishing secure connectivity between these locations using traditional methods would have required four to six weeks of configuration, including firewall changes and network provisioning. Even under optimal conditions, this timeline conflicted with the rapid deployment expectations of the AI team.

The second constraint was user access. The chatbot needed to serve employees, partners and supply chain participants using mobile devices outside the organization’s control. VPN requirements or exposing systems to the public internet were not viable options.

NetFoundry eliminated both constraints. Secure connections between environments were established almost immediately, eliminating the need for manual network changes.

Using NetFoundry SDKs for native Android and iOS, the airline embedded zero-trust connectivity directly into the chatbot application itself. This allowed users to securely connect from any device, on any network, without VPNs, while keeping the Azure environment completely private and not exposed to the internet.

All access was restricted to authenticated and authorized identities over a private zero-trust overlay.

Initial validation was completed in under an hour. Within weeks, the system was fully operational.

The outcome extended beyond deployment. The AI team met its deadlines, the business realized its intended benefits and the organization avoided both the delays and the risks associated with traditional approaches. The initiative moved from stalled to operational.

“Security teams want stronger protection, while project teams need to move faster,” says Mark Jaffe, chief strategy and marketing officer. “We give them both.”

Securing the Machine-Driven Future

In what ways does incremental adoption support secure transformation across distributed enterprise systems?

NetFoundry has already proven its model at a global scale.

It supports organizations ranging from large, security-sensitive enterprises, including financial services, healthcare and government environments, to innovators building next-generation systems.

In practice, adoption rarely begins as a full transformation. Teams typically start with a single, high-impact use case, whether enabling an AI initiative, connecting partner environments or securing a legacy workload, and then expand incrementally, reusing the same platform across priorities.

This incremental adoption model reduces risk while allowing organizations to modernize at their own pace, aligning security transformation with immediate business outcomes rather than large-scale, disruptive overhauls.

Organizations achieve faster deployment, secure connectivity and scalable operations across distributed environments. This operational impact underpins NetFoundry’s recognition as Zero Trust Networking Platform of the Year 2026.