At RSAC Conference 2026, Mounir Hahad of Hewlett Packard Enterprise joins Sean Martin to unpack two major announcements -- an AI firewall built for enterprise AI governance and the formal launch of HPE Threat Labs -- and explain why security that lives inside the network is fundamentally different from security bolted on top of it. If you're asking whether your organization can safely embrace generative AI, this conversation is where to start.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise has been rethinking what it means to secure an enterprise network -- and the answer they keep arriving at is that security cannot be an afterthought. At RSAC Conference 2026, Mounir Hahad, Head of HPE Threat Labs, sat down with Sean Martin to walk through what that philosophy looks like in practice and what two major announcements at the show mean for security teams.
One of those announcements is the HPE AI firewall -- a solution built specifically for organizations trying to govern how employees use generative AI tools without shutting down innovation. Mounir Hahad frames the challenge directly: gen AI has doubled the attack surface, and organizations that fail to act risk both data leakage and a loss of confidence in the technology itself. The AI firewall starts with visibility -- showing which AI services employees are using, what data is moving where, and whether private information is leaking to external services -- and then gives administrators the tools to set and enforce policy.
The second announcement is the formal launch of HPE Threat Labs, which brings together threat research capabilities from both Hewlett Packard Enterprise and the former Juniper Networks. The combined team covers both threat analysis and vulnerability analysis -- capabilities that were previously siloed. HPE Threat Labs has published its inaugural In the Wild threat report, drawing on telemetry, honeypots, and open-source intelligence to give CISOs and decision makers a clear view of how cybercrime has industrialized, why attacks are increasingly targeted, and why high-confidence alerts matter more than ever.
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GUEST
Mounir Hahad, Head of HPE Threat Labs, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mounirhahad/
RESOURCES
HPE Threat Labs: https://www.hpe.com
HPE Threat Labs 2026 In the Wild Threat Report: https://www.hpe.com
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KEYWORDS
Mounir Hahad, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HPE, HPE Threat Labs, Sean Martin, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, brand highlight, AI firewall, generative AI security, network security, threat intelligence, SASE, cybercrime, RSAC Conference 2026, threat research, enterprise security, AI governance, cybersecurity
Security Is the Network: Integrating AI Firewall and Threat Intelligence Into the Fabric of Enterprise Defense | A Brand Highlight at RSAC Conference 2026 with Mounir Hahad, Head of HPE Threat Labs of Hewlett Packard Enterprise
[00:00:10] Sean Martin: All right, here we are. I have a nice HPE stand to lean upon as we nearly close the day out.
[00:00:20] Mounir Hahad: Yeah.
[00:00:20] Sean Martin: Almost. It's nearly the end of the first day and I'm here with my good friend Mounir. How are you, Mounir?
[00:00:26] Mounir Hahad: I'm doing fantastic.
[00:00:27] Sean Martin: So good to see you. And you're always at the core of what's happening in the industry and now you're doing some cool stuff with HPE.
[00:00:38] Mounir Hahad: You know, in this industry, what I usually say -- you can't walk, you gotta run. So you better be at the forefront.
[00:00:45] Sean Martin: You gotta lead the charge, my friend. And you always do that. I'm always happy to chat with you. What's your current role at HPE? What are you up to?
[00:00:55] Mounir Hahad: My role at HPE, coming from an acquisition of Juniper Networks, has just transitioned. I used to be the Head of Juniper Threat Labs, and now I'm the Head of HPE Threat Labs. So we combine the capabilities of both HPE and Juniper. Both had threat labs, and we bring them together and it's fantastic because it's very complementary. They were doing a lot of vulnerability analysis, which we were not focused on. And vice versa -- we do a lot of threat analysis, which they were not focused on. So we bring these two capabilities together and it's just a fantastic match. I'm looking forward to this new role within HPE.
[00:01:35] Sean Martin: Love it. Maybe just kind of level set things. People probably have a vision or their own understanding of what HPE is -- is there something you want to say to maybe kind of reinforce who the company is right now and what you're all about?
[00:01:52] Mounir Hahad: Yeah. I would be surprised if people didn't know HPE. But as you know, HPE and HP Inc. kind of split apart about 10 years ago. HPE is all about the larger enterprises, service providers, big compute, big storage, cloud capabilities, as well as networking and security, while HP Inc. is a little bit more consumer-oriented. Within HPE there are a number of large divisions. One of which -- the one I'm on -- is the networking division. And it has a number of pillars underneath it. The SASE and security side is where the threat labs mostly lives. But we also have the Aruba side of the house, from the wifi access points and the SD-WAN solutions, which also brings their capabilities in securing the network together into this one entity. The goal we are pushing towards is that security is not an add-on -- it has to be part of the network. Every element in your network has to play a role in securing the organization. It's not something you bring in as an additional element. As long as you get the people who make the networking products to play that game of securing the whole thing, it's actually a lot more powerful.
[00:03:18] Sean Martin: So with the threat labs -- which we'll touch on -- you can tell us a little bit about some cool things happening there. I presume a lot of the things you're seeing in the research you're doing and the conversations you're having with customers and their partners have driven an announcement that you guys have made here -- the AI firewall?
[00:03:41] Mounir Hahad: Yeah. You don't have to look very far -- just look around and you'll see it. I honestly think that generative AI in particular is a fantastic opportunity for humanity to move forward and start achieving things at scales that are unprecedented. We're able to develop capabilities ten times faster than we used to. So it is fantastic. The one thing that security people like myself have to now grapple with is -- we've just doubled our attack surface. We are opening new doors that threat actors are quick to take advantage of. So on the one hand, we do want people to embrace new technology, embrace gen AI. On the other hand, we have to be there to make sure that whatever we are doing is secure. Because this thing again gives opportunities to threat actors that have never been seen before. And we need to be there -- because if we let it go, the flashback is going to be so bad that people might decide, you know what, I may not deploy this technology. It's too early. It's too dangerous. It's too insecure. We do not want that to happen. So it is very important for us to bring to market solutions that help customers gain the confidence they need. Is it okay for me to allow my employees to go and use this particular service? Can I bring it in-house? Is my data still protected? Am I experiencing leakage? All of these questions that every organization is grappling with right now -- we need to bring some answers to that. And this is part of one of the announcements we're making today as we introduce our AI firewall. The first thing it's going to give is tremendous visibility into what the organization is doing. Who's using what AI solution. Where are people going. What is happening to my data. Is somebody uploading documents they shouldn't be uploading? Am I connecting to services that are learning from my private information and then potentially leaking it to others? So all of that is part of the announcement we're making today. That governance aspect is key. You start with the visibility, give people an option to say -- this is okay, this is not okay -- and finally identify threats when they're known to be there.
[00:06:10] Sean Martin: Where does it sit in the stack? What kind of visibility do you get?
[00:06:13] Mounir Hahad: The visibility we have at this point is the same as you'd have with things like application identity, URL filtering, or threat management in general. At the same level -- when you open up your console and you're seeing the security aspect of your entire organization, you'll have a dashboard specifically tailored to the AI firewall, and it'll give you full visibility into who is connected to what.
[00:06:42] Sean Martin: Okay, fantastic. Love it. I want to switch to your baby -- the Threat Labs. What's going on there?
[00:06:55] Mounir Hahad: My original heart and soul.
[00:06:57] Sean Martin: Yes.
[00:06:58] Mounir Hahad: So we're expanding our capabilities tremendously. What we are doing right now -- we are announcing to the world that HPE Threat Labs is really born and it's here. Not as a new baby -- it's here because we have legacy that we are bringing with us from both sides, from both Juniper and HPE. We're putting our efforts together so people can go to our website and immediately find the HPE Threat Labs dedicated page on hpe.com, and you'll be able to see the breadth of research that we are doing. There are a number of articles already published there. And one of the really cool things I like about that page is that we look at what's happening in the wild, and we pick some stories -- something like, there was this attack here and somebody lost data, or a ransomware attack -- and we say, let's take that attack, reproduce it as accurately as we can within a lab, and just watch our products deal with it. Just watch. Don't do anything. And it's amazing. We have a number of those demo videos posted that will tell you that nobody had to add a signature, nobody had to add an entry into some threat feed. We just let the machine learning do its job and see how it would have identified that threat and potentially blocked that malicious stack. For me, it says volumes about why you're buying security products in the first place. Is it because of checkboxes, or is it because you really want some protection?
[00:08:36] Sean Martin: Protection.
[00:08:37] Mounir Hahad: Absolutely. And I invite people to go check out those videos.
[00:08:46] Sean Martin: All right. So we'll include a link to that for people so they can find it easily. As we wrap here -- you also produce reports. Gimme one highlight to tease that out. Maybe we'll have another conversation on that. What's that research?
[00:08:58] Mounir Hahad: Yeah. So we wanted to look at the entirety of 2025 -- collect our entire set of telemetry, everything we hear from our customers, as well as the threat research that we do. And we also have deception networks, we have honeypots all around the world. We bring all that data together, augment it with some open-source threat intelligence that we're familiar with, and put it together in an easily consumable report that is really meant for CISOs and decision makers. Where is the threat landscape moving? How are the threats behaving these days? And it's amazing to see that there is a lot less noise than we used to have in the past, but a lot of the attacks are targeted. And the targets seem to be people with valuable assets, obviously. The attackers are a lot more organized. I mean -- believe me when I tell you -- there are people who work for threat actors and don't even know it. They're employees of some company, asked to develop a tool or conduct some operation, with no clue. At the end of the day, it's a really organized cybercrime operation -- with product managers, developers, testers, people in operations. It's amazing. So it really highlights the need for people like us to keep an eye on what's truly happening and bring that knowledge together into easily consumable products. We do not want our customers sitting in front of a console deciding, is this a false positive? Do I have to worry about this one or not? When we give you an alert, take it to the bank.
[00:10:39] Sean Martin: No second guessing.
[00:10:40] Mounir Hahad: No second guessing.
[00:10:41] Sean Martin: You know what's happening -- this is what passion looks like, my friend. I love it. So good to chat with you. Please connect with Mounir and the HPE team on LinkedIn. And we'll put some links into some of the things you talked about. Stay tuned for more coming to you here from RSAC Conference.