Keynote: What 45 Businesses Told Us About Security in the AI Era
In his keynote speech, OpenVPN CEO Francis Dinha shared new research surveying 45 IT and business leaders about what's really happening with access inside their organizations. The findings expose a stark gap: 40% of professionals have access to sensitive data they don't need, and only 27% of organizations revoke access immediately when roles change. Dinha unpacked why Zero Trust adoption stalls (hint: it's not cost or willpower; it's about clarity) and revealed the "AI Willingness Paradox." Plus, he shared a practical framework for how AI and Zero Trust actually work together and five concrete steps everyone watching can act on immediately.
Speaker: Francis Dinha, OpenVPN CEO
25 Years of OpenVPN: Reflections on the Protocol That Built an Industry
Take a look back on the foundation of the OpenVPN protocol with protocol founder James Yonan, where he traced OpenVPN's journey from its earliest inspiration — including a nearly banned book on cryptography — to becoming the foundation of a global company. In his session, he revisited why the SSL/TLS security already securing the web couldn't simply be adapted to a VPN, and how a scrappy open-source community built momentum, survived scrutiny from academic cryptographers, and clawed its way to Windows compatibility. Yonan shared how a chance encounter led to meeting Francis Dinha and building a company around the project, the creation of Access Server, foundations with Apple, Google, and AWS, and more. Plus, get a look into the future of the open-source project.
Speaker: James Yonan, OpenVPN co-founder and CTO
What's Next: Inside the OpenVPN Access Server Product Roadmap
In this session, Johan Draaisma shared where Access Server is headed in the coming year, picking up where Access Server 3.0 and the introduction of Access Server Link left off. He unveiled new features coming to the platform and dug into upcoming ZTNA-related additions that continue to bring Zero Trust principles into Access Server.
Speakers: Johan Draaisma, OpenVPN Sr. Product Manager, Access Server
CloudConnexa: Updates and Roadmap in the Age of AI
Yuriy Chapran shared the latest updates and what's ahead for CloudConnexa as AI reshapes how businesses connect and secure their networks. He introduced the MCP Gateway, built to secure and manage connections to Model Context Protocol servers, as well as other upcoming features. In this session, you'll see how CloudConnexa's roadmap is evolving to meet the demands of an AI-driven world, with practical takeaways on what's coming next.
Speaker: Yuriy Chapran, OpenVPN Sr. Product Manager, CloudConnexa
Customer Spotlight: Enabling Development at Scale with CloudConnexa and Google Cloud Private Service Connect
In this session, Zack Dunning shared how Buildertrend's development organization uses OpenVPN CloudConnexa alongside Google Cloud Private Service Connect to enable secure, scalable access to their cloud infrastructure. He also walked through the real-world architecture behind the integration and the practical benefits it delivers for their engineering teams.
Speaker: Zack Dunning, Staff Cloud Engineer, Buildertrend
Front Lines of Security: A Candid Conversation on Real-World Threats
In this session, OpenVPN MSP partners and members of OpenVPN's security and compliance team sat down for a candid conversation about the real-world threats facing businesses today. Moderated by Jason Ng and Nick Finnegan, the panel explored the trends shaping security team conversations right now — including how AI and Zero Trust Network Access are changing the way organizations think about workflows, security, and infrastructure decisions.
Panelists include Sean T. Furman, Founder and Principal of STF Consulting; Luis Tarango, Director de Ingeniería of TGC; Brian Litzinger, OpenVPN's Head of Security, Compliance & Risk; and Andrew Proctor, OpenVPN's VP of IT Operations.
Securing the Autonomous Frontier: Zero Trust Architecture for Agentic AI Workloads
As organizations deploy autonomous AI agents to automate complex enterprise operations, securing these dynamic, self-evolving workloads becomes a top priority. Traditional network perimeters and static payload checks cannot inspect or govern the autonomous, intent-driven actions of agentic AI. Because agents execute real-world operations using untrusted inputs, static boundaries no longer suffice; context is the new perimeter. This session explored how to establish a robust Zero Trust Architecture tailored specifically for autonomous agents. We discussed the core pillars of agentic Zero Trust, including non-human cryptographic identity (SPIFFE), privilege minimization, and continuous per-event verification. This session also examined how an Agent Gateway acts as a Zero Trust enforcement airlock, continuously scoring behavioral risk and enforcing policy controls before and after every agent interaction. Crucially, the sessions showcased how native GCP capabilities, such as Model Armor for prompt injection guardrails and Cloud KMS for cryptographic attestation, create immutable, verifiable audit trails for every agent action. This session provided a clear roadmap for shifting from inspecting data payloads to verifying operational purpose, ensuring enterprise databases and critical workloads remain protected against unauthorized agent actions.
Speaker: Assaf Namer, Head of AI Security, Google Cloud
2026 Network Layer Attacks & Remediation
What was safe in 2025 is not safe anymore. Watch this session to discover how modern Layer 2 threats, MAC spoofing, and AirSnitch attacks can impact your network today. The focus here was on practical, high-level strategies to lock down your infrastructure using solid switching & segmentation, VPNs, and strong certificate-based authentication.
Speaker: Micah Spady, Product Marketing, SecureW2
BONUS SESSION: Access Server Complete Setup & Configuration
Want to set up OpenVPN Access Server from scratch and configure it for Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA)? In this complete step-by-step tutorial, we walked through the initial setup of OpenVPN Access Server, configuring authentication and multi-factor authentication (MFA), creating users and groups, and setting up domain-based access rules to secure your network and applications. Learn how to move beyond traditional VPN access and implement a Zero Trust approach using identity-based access controls, least-privilege permissions, and domain-based routing.