Zero Trust has become the dominant security architecture for hybrid and cloud environments, but many organizations are discovering that deploying enforcement technologies alone does not deliver operational control. Firewalls, cloud security groups, and microsegmentation platforms enforce access decisions, yet the policies behind those controls are often fragmented, difficult to validate, and constantly changing. In this conversation, FireMon CEO Jody Brazil discusses why modern security architectures increasingly require a security policy control plane: a layer that continuously validates how policy is enforced across firewalls, cloud networks, and segmentation platforms. The discussion explores why policy drift occurs in real environments, how enforcement systems become difficult to coordinate at scale, and what organizations must do to ensure Zero Trust policies remain consistent as infrastructure evolves.
Segment Resources:
FireMon — Policy is Power https://www.firemon.com FireMon Insights https://www.firemon.com/products/insights FireMon + Illumio Integration https://www.firemon.com/integrations/illumio SC Awards Finalists https://www.scworld.com/sc-awards-finalists
This segment is sponsored by FireMon. Visit https://securityweekly.com/firemonrsac to learn more about them!
Read the interview summary from SC Media here: Firemon’s Jody Brazil on the security policy control plane
- 0:00 - – RSAC 2026 Interview with FireMon CEO Jody Brazil
- 0:35 - – The Missing Layer in Zero Trust Explained
- 01:19 - – Why Zero Trust Creates New Security Challenges
- 02:13 - – From Chaos to Control: Security Policy Fundamentals
- 03:20 - – Network Segmentation & Complexity in Modern Enterprises
- 04:47 - – Managing Billions of Access Paths Across Firewalls
- 05:45 - – Multi-Cloud & Hybrid Network Policy Challenges
- 08:04 - – What is the Security Control Plane?
- 08:48 - – Visibility First: Understanding Your Network Access
- 10:12 - – Cleaning Up Legacy Firewall Rules & Security Gaps
- 10:58 - – Visualizing Network Security & Policy Enforcement
- 11:52 - – Policy vs Technology: Why Policy Still Wins
- 12:44 - – Agentic AI Risks & Security Policy Implications
- 13:57 - – Reducing Risk & Blast Radius with Network Security
- 14:53 - – When Security Breaks: Why Teams Disable Controls
- 15:03 - – Automating Security Operations & Access Requests
- 16:04 - – Scaling Security Without Breaking the Business
Jody Brazil is the Founder and CEO of FireMon and the original visionary behind the Network Security Policy Management (NSPM) category. Since co-founding FireMon in 2004, Jody has been at the forefront of firewall policy and change management innovation. Following his tenure as founder of the cloud-security platform DisruptOps, he returned to lead FireMon in 2021. Today, he focuses on helping enterprises maintain a unified control plane, automating security policies across hybrid-cloud infrastructures to ensure continuous compliance and operational integrity
