VMware Explore 2025 is right around the corner! The agenda is bursting at the seams, and the catalog’s session scheduler is now available.
Taking place in Las Vegas again this year from August 25 to 28, 2025, Explore 2025 will provide attendees with insights into cutting-edge technology purpose-built for private cloud environments. This year throws a spotlight on new VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 innovations, including integrated advanced security capabilities from VMware vDefend. vDefend is a leading software-defined, hypervisor-integrated, lateral security solution purpose-built to comprehensively protect every VCF workload.
Join the excitement and learn new techniques for building robust digital defenses against advanced threats, such as ransomware. Discover how vDefend accelerates security deployment, delivers multi-layered lateral security to support an organization’s zero-trust strategy, boosts operational efficiency through AI-assisted technology, and more.
Check out these vDefend sessions below, and mark your calendars!
Featured Executive Session
Ransomware Protection and App Delivery for the Cloud and AI Era [NSLB1756LV]
Organizations are increasingly demanding a cloud operating model enhanced with AI/GenAI for the rapid operationalization of lateral security and application delivery. VMware vDefend and VMware Avi Load Balancer offer plug-and-play integrations with VCF, providing comprehensive application and threat visibility, zero-trust security, and web application security to combat ransomware. These solutions leverage AI/GenAI to boost operational efficiency and productivity. Join us to hear about our latest innovations and strategic direction in multi-terabit performance and scale, extending “as code” and “as self-service” to VCF virtual private cloud (VPC), as well as use cases for Private AI and agentic workloads.
Speaker:
Umesh Mahajan, VP & GM, Application Networking and Security, Broadcom
Breakout Sessions
Generative AI: Addressing Security and Resiliency Concerns [NSLP2051LV]
Ranga Rajagopalan, CTO – ANS Division, Broadcom
Prashant Gandhi, Head of Products – ANS Division, Broadcom
Mark Fournier, CIO/CTO, US Senate Federal Credit Union
Accelerating Firewall and Load Balancer Operations and Troubleshooting with GenAI innovations [INVB1864LV]
In this session, we will provide a tech preview of how new innovations in GenAI can help accelerate the day-to-day operations and troubleshooting of firewalls and load balancers in the data center. By utilizing a chat-style interface with natural language queries, security and load balancing administrators can get immediate answers to AI-generated explanations of firewall and load balancer alerts, AI-generated operational insights based on current firewall and load balancer configurations, and AI-generated code samples for automating firewall and load balancer configurations.
Speaker:
Ranga Rajagopalan, CTO – ANS Division, Broadcom
Catherine Fan, Technology Product Manager, Broadcom
Building Secure Private AI Deep Dive [INVB1432LV]
Discover how to securely build and scale private AI infrastructure using vDefend and VMware® Private AI with NVIDIA. This session will guide you through designing a robust private AI architecture with built-in data protection, workload isolation, and automated policy enforcement. Learn how vDefend enhances AI model security with segmentation and real-time threat detection, while Private AI with NVIDIA provides the platform to deploy and manage AI workloads with full control. Ideal for architects and security teams, this session delivers practical insights to operationalize AI securely in a private cloud environment.
Speaker:
Chris McCain, Director, Broadcom
Alex Fanous, Staff Cloud Architect, Broadcom
Demystifying VMware vDefend Distributed Security Within VMware Cloud Foundation [NSLB1076LV] People’s Choice Award Winner
Join this award-winning session to learn how vDefend Distributed Firewall, Distributed Intrusion Detection System, and Distributed Intrusion Protection System provide security services in the kernel through the processing of rules and signatures intrinsically within the virtual networking infrastructure. We will show the inner workings of the distributed services from an architectural standpoint, the best implementation techniques, and troubleshooting tools for examining the effectiveness of the strategy deployed. We will also cover the use of AI to simplify the configuration of the centrally managed protection mechanisms and greatly reduce the time and effort needed to put a tight security policy in place.
Speakers:
Chris McCain, Director, Broadcom
Tim Burkard, Staff Technical Learning Engineer, Broadcom
Elevate Threat Investigation Workflows with the GenAI Intelligent Assist [NSLB1596LV]
Security operators are tasked with investigating and responding to security incidents. With limited information and assistance, key tasks such as triaging, contextualizing, and responding to incidents in a timely manner can place a burden on resources and result in suboptimal outcomes. The Intelligent Assist for vDefend is designed to address these challenges by leveraging GenAI. This demo-based session will cover how Intelligent Assist for vDefend enables explainability and remediation of threat detection events.
Speaker:
Bopaiah Puliyanda, Senior Manager, Product Management, Broadcom
From Zero to Hero: VMware vDefend Advanced Threat Prevention Deployment Best Practices [NSLB1869LV]
Recovering from ransomware or just getting started to build your defenses? In this session, we will share battle-tested best practices on how to successfully deploy VMware® vDefend Advanced Threat Prevention to buydown risk and defend your applications and data against attacks.
Speaker:
Stijn Vanveerdeghem, Senior Manager, Technology Product Management, Broadcom
Ready to See What Happens When Zero Trust Just Clicks? [NSLB1193LV]
Supercharge your Zero Trust VCF strategy by combining vDefend with Symantec® Zero Trust Network Access protection—designed to deliver seamless, powerful network security with the most user-friendly experience possible, even on personal and unmanaged devices. With more than 80% of organizations embracing bring-your-own-device policies and 68% reporting productivity gains, security cannot afford to slow anyone down. Don’t miss this high-energy walkthrough, real-world examples, and a live demo showing how vDefend and Symantec software solutions are transforming secure access for today’s hybrid enterprise, making it ideal for VCF private cloud environments.
Speakers:
Stanislav Elenkrich, Lead Product Manager SSE, Broadcom
Srini Nimmagadda, Director, Technology Product Manager, Broadcom
Safeguard Your Containers and VMs with VMware vDefend in VMware Cloud Foundation [NSLB1552LV]
VCF is the ultimate platform for containers and virtual machines, incorporating an upstream-conformant Kubernetes runtime: VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS). Organizations can operate modern applications alongside traditional virtual machines on the same infrastructure. Seamlessly securing such non-homogeneous workloads should not become a challenge that requires different solutions and expertise. This session will showcase how vDefend and Antrea work together to streamline the security delivery and protect containers and VMs.
Speaker:
Madhukar Krishnarao, Sr. Product Manager, Broadcom
Security Reference Design for VMware Cloud Foundation [NSLB1836LV]
Join this session to learn how to design security for VMware Cloud Foundation® (VCF) management and workload domains. This session will include best practices for securing VCF management domain, as well as the workloads running in the VCF workload domain. We will cover Infrastructure segmentation, app-level ring-fencing/micro-segmentation, and ransomware prevention and threat visibility design.
Speaker:
Pooja Patel, Director, Broadcom
Unified Security Policy Orchestrator for Self-Service with Governance [INVB1440LV]
Application operations teams know what network connectivity they need for their application services, and prefer a self-service model. However, the information risk assessment and network security teams need compliance and governance. How can this policy be updated with compliance checks? Introducing SPaC (Security Posture and Compliance) —a unified security orchestrator—that addresses all these requirements and turns an application service owner’s policy into a security-compliant policy model that can be programmed in not just vDefend firewalls, but also can be extended to other firewall vendors and network security devices.
Speakers:
Kausum Kumar, Senior Manager, Technical Product Management, Broadcom
Ranga Rajagopalan, CTO – ANS Division, Broadcom
VMware vDefend Distributed Firewall Operational Overview [NSLB1623LV]
This session is intended for all practitioners who want to delve into the details of vDefend Distributed Firewall from Day 0 to Day 365. Learn how operators can rapidly adopt and secure their networks and applications via macro- and microsegmentation. We will cover how to quickly tag and group workloads, add new rules, or continuously update existing rule sets, and how vDefend functionalities provide continuous assessment of segmentation posture along with blast radius analysis.
Speakers:
Kausum Kumar, Senior Manager, Technical Product Management, Broadcom
Catherine Fan, Technology Product Manager, Broadcom
Explore 2025 – A Can’t Miss Event
Whether you’re pursuing certifications, digging into VCF and Private AI, or participating in hackathons or Hands on Labs, you’ll find resources to drive meaningful progress within your organization. And if you still need to register, start here!
All the sessions above, plus Meet the Expert Roundtables and Tutorials, can be found in the vDefend curated agenda here. You will find all the Application Networking and Security sessions here. The catalog scheduler is now open for registered attendees, so mark your schedules today!
See you in Las Vegas!
