There has been a 37% increase in organizations that have fully converged their network and security operations over the past year, according to VIAVI 2027 State of the Network study.
This annual study, now in its 18th edition, focuses on current drivers and best practices for network performance and security, seeking insights into priorities and outcomes. The research was conducted by Omdia using surveys of 750 networking and security personnel spanning seven countries, including Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States. Participants represented different levels within IT, from leadership to management, across a wide range of organization sizes and industry verticals.
The survey reported a 10-point rise in completed deployments (from 27% in 2025 to 37% in 2026). An additional 45% of respondents stated they were in the process of converging network and security operations, meaning just over four-fifths of enterprises (82%) have undergone or are undergoing the move to NetSecOps.
Forty-four percent of those that had completed the switch cited enhanced security as a key benefit of converging, with 30% noticing a reduced time to detect issues since deploying a NetSecOps approach. Twenty-two percent cited a reduction in the reported number of incidents and 22% stated the time to investigate had reduced. Additionally, those that had implemented a NetSecOps strategy were 2.7 times more likely to have reported a significant improvement in mean-time-to-detect (MTTD) rates (35 vs. 13%).
“The increase in completed conversion and the benefits being cited in the State of the Network Study are consistent with the experience of our customers,” said Chris Labac, Vice President and General Manager, Network Performance and Threat Solutions, VIAVI. “Aligning a converged NetSecOps organizational model with integrated network monitoring and security platforms is a critical success factor for enterprises today.”
“As an organization’s attack surface expands, driven by increasingly sophisticated and AI-enabled threats, NetOps and SecOps teams need shared visibility to strengthen their security posture,” said Jim Frey, Principal Analyst, Networking, Enterprise Strategy Group from Informa Tech Target. “With around a fifth of enterprises still without a defined strategy, the challenge is to reach these organizations and demonstrate the benefits of a converged NetSecOps approach.”
Another strategic approach organizations are using to improve network performance and security is structured testing. The most common approach, cited by more than half of respondents, is pre-deployment validation of new technologies, such as post-quantum cryptography (PQC), AI security, SASE and cloud networking. Among respondents conducting testing, 52% reported seeing fewer outages and service disruptions, 44% reported a reduced number and/or severity of security incidents and 42% reported improvements in either application performance or latency.
The survey also highlighted that most organizations were using multiple strategies to mitigate the impact of security measures on network performance. Sixty-five percent of respondents reported the use of AI and ML tools to optimize both security and performance, 65% conduct capacity planning to prevent security measures from straining the network, 58% have adopted pre-deployment testing of network and security controls, and 58% again use ongoing, continuous testing and tuning of security controls to minimize performance impact.
