SAN FRANCISCO — Juniper Networks kicked off the RSA Conference by adding more artificial intelligence (AI) across its security product line and advancing what the company calls "Connected Security." It’s also getting a little bit SASE with its secure SD-WAN, but executives say they’ll talk more about this service later in the year.

Juniper’s two major announcements at RSA involve encrypted traffic analysis for Juniper Advanced Threat Prevention (ATP) Cloud and SRX Series firewalls, as well as the integration of SecIntel to the Mist platform for wireless access. The vendor will demonstrate both at RSA and make them available later in the year.

When it comes to enterprise security, “2019 was the year of enforcement,” said Oliver Schuermann, senior director of enterprise product marketing at Juniper Networks. He cited the vendor’s moves to push security down to its MX routers and update its cSRX containerized firewall so that they can integrate with traditional network security management and SDN controllers. It also acquired wireless LAN startup Mist Systems for $405 million, which, in addition to the wireless technology, gave Juniper an in-house AI engine.

After a year spent focused on enforcement, 2020 “is the year of intelligence, meaning threat-aware networks,” he continued.

The first piece of this involves integrating Juniper’s security intelligence feed, SecIntel, with Mist. Last summer the vendor incorporated SecIntel into its MX Series routers, and a couple months later it extended the Mist platform from wireless networks to also cover wired networks. Today’s announcement marries the two and represents a step toward complete integration of wireless access into Juniper’s Connected Security strategy, Schuermann said.

“Functionality wise, we look at different threat vectors based on where the [Mist] platform sits,” he explained.

Mist customers can now get threat alerts detected by Juniper SRX Series Firewalls and ATP Cloud. This allows administrators to more quickly assess security risks when users and devices connect to wireless networks and take action via the Mist cloud or APIs such as quarantining or enforcing policies.

Additionally, Juniper added an encrypted traffic analysis feature to Juniper ATP Cloud and SRX Series firewalls. This technology helps security teams “figure out if traffic is malicious in the first place,” and its first target is IoT botnets, Schuermann said.

The company says this technology can detect malicious botnet traffic that is “going dark” or hiding via encryption. It gives organizations greater visibility and policy control over encrypted traffic without requiring resource-intensive SSL decryption. For customers running Juniper SRX firewalls, it also does not require additional hardware or network changes to set up and manage.

“These are the two tips of the spears,” for RSA, Schuermann said, referring to the Mist-SecIntel integration and the encrypted traffic analysis. “And we’re wrapping it in SD-WAN.” While Juniper doesn’t have an SD-WAN-specific announcement timed to the event, “the other piece you’ll hear at RSA is what we are calling secure SD-WAN.”

Now that everything — devices, IoT, branch offices — is connected, SD-WAN becomes more important. Juniper’s approach to SD-WAN comes from its networking roots, Schuermann explained, and in that way differs from that of standalone SD-WAN or security vendors.

“We don’t see it as a product, we see it as a feature that lives on our routers, so you have a natural convergence of security and scalable routing,” he said. “Really, it’s about operational simplicity.” Juniper’s secure SD-WAN uses the Contrail Service Orchestration platform, which is its SD-WAN management platform that integrates security and intent-based policy management. It also ties into SecIntel. Throughout the year Juniper plans to rollout upwards of a dozen additional features, Schuermann added.

Juniper’s secure SD-WAN is “similar” to secure access service edge, or SASE, Schuermann said. “And all these pieces play into AI-driven.”