At VMware Explore 2025 in Las Vegas, Broadcom unveiled a series of security upgrades aimed at strengthening its VMware Cloud Foundation ecosystem. The enhancements extend across VMware vDefend, VMware Avi Load Balancer, and other components, with a clear focus on protecting agentic AI workflows and preparing enterprises for the post-quantum era of encryption.
Strengthening Agentic AI Security
Broadcom executives emphasized that the rise of agentic AI—autonomous or semi-autonomous systems capable of taking actions across enterprise data, tools, and applications—creates a new class of risks. Unlike traditional apps, agentic systems combine the vulnerabilities of software automation with those of large language models. To counter this, Broadcom is introducing additional safeguards to monitor, restrict, and validate how AI agents interact with corporate systems.
A particularly pressing issue is the Model Context Protocol (MCP), which allows AI agents to connect to external resources via natural language. While MCP makes it easier for AI assistants to interact with databases, repositories, and enterprise apps, it also expands the potential attack surface. Broadcom’s new controls for VMware Avi will help mitigate these risks through web application firewall (WAF) integration, MCP session persistence, and access authorization.
Unified Governance for AI and Traditional Apps
“AI is no longer something separate—it’s simply part of the modern application stack,” said Purnima Padmanabhan, general manager of Broadcom’s Tanzu Division. She explained that customers are re-architecting their data environments to take advantage of generative and agentic AI.
To support this shift, VMware is rolling out a centralized security and vulnerability dashboard. The dashboard provides compliance visibility and observability for both AI-driven applications and more conventional enterprise workloads, enabling teams to apply consistent security policies across all environments.
Expanding VMware Cloud Foundation Capabilities
Broadcom is also enhancing VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF). In its most recent release (VCF 9.0), the platform added an AI Agent Builder Service to simplify the creation of enterprise AI agents. Looking forward, Broadcom plans to support MCP integrations natively, giving organizations a secure method to connect assistants with platforms such as GitHub, SQL Server, Oracle, ServiceNow, and Postgres—without needing custom connectors.
Prashanth Shenoy, vice president of product marketing for VCF, noted that this evolution aligns with customer demands for safer, faster AI deployment at scale. Some of the new MCP-related features are already available in tech preview, with broader availability expected in upcoming updates.
Preparing for the Post-Quantum Future
In addition to AI-related improvements, Broadcom highlighted post-quantum encryption support as a strategic step forward. This feature ensures VMware’s enterprise customers can begin future-proofing their environments against next-generation cryptographic threats.
