TL;DR · 30-second read
The Short Version
A yearly survey of 750 corporate technology workers in seven countries, run for the testing-equipment maker VIAVI, found that more companies are merging two teams that used to work apart: the people who keep the company network running, and the people who defend it from hackers.
Companies that merged the teams were nearly three times as likely to say they now spot attacks much faster.
That matters as attacks increasingly use artificial intelligence. Still, about one company in five has no plan to merge at all.
VIAVI Solutions said in a release distributed by PR Newswire on October 21, 2026, that its 2027 State of the Network study found 37% of surveyed organizations have fully converged their network and security operations, up from 27% a year earlier. Another 45% said they are partway through the change. That puts 82% either finished with or working toward what the industry calls NetSecOps, a single operating model for the teams that run networks and the teams that defend them.
This is the study’s 18th edition. Research firm Omdia conducted it, surveying 750 networking and security staff in Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Mexico, the UK and the US. Respondents ranged from IT leadership to management and came from organizations of many sizes and industries. Organizations that had converged were 2.7 times as likely to report a significant improvement in mean time to detect (MTTD), the average time it takes to notice a fault or threat: 35% did, against 13% of the rest.
Executive Summary
The headline finding is about how organizations are structured, not about a product. Network operations (NetOps) teams watch traffic to keep it fast and available. Security operations (SecOps) teams watch the same traffic for threats. The two have often used separate tools and separate data. VIAVI’s study says that split is closing quickly. Completed convergence rose ten percentage points in a year, and only about a fifth of respondents have neither finished nor started the transition.
The study connects converged teams with better self-reported detection. It also names structured testing as the most common way organizations avoid trading security for performance. That means checking technologies such as post-quantum cryptography, AI security tools, SASE and cloud networking before they go live. For organizations whose networks carry AI applications or face AI-assisted attackers, the findings suggest security outcomes depend partly on how teams are organized and how changes are tested, not only on which tools are bought.
Two caveats apply. The data is self-reported survey data. It was published by a company whose business includes test and measurement, network performance and threat-detection products. And the release presents correlations, not controlled comparisons. The findings are best read as strong directional signals rather than proof.
One Number, Two Meanings: Reading the 37%
The figure 37% appears twice in the study, measuring two different things. In 2026, 37% of respondents reported fully converged network and security operations. The rise from 27% is ten percentage points, and as a relative increase that is also about 37%, because 10 divided by 27 is roughly 0.37. So the headline’s 37% increase and the body’s 37% of organizations happen to land on the same number. Both are accurate. Anyone comparing this with other surveys should be clear about which one they are quoting.
The full breakdown is 37% complete, 45% in progress and about 18% neither. The largest group is the one still mid-transition. That group is where demand for integrated tools, redesigned processes and cross-trained staff is concentrated, which matters to suppliers, systems integrators and hiring managers. In practice, convergence usually means shared visibility into traffic, shared data and joint workflows, so that a slowdown and a possible intrusion are looked at together instead of being passed between departments.
The 2.7x Detection Edge Points to Structure, Not Just Software
The study’s most striking result compares respondents with and without a NetSecOps strategy. Among those with one, 35% reported a significant improvement in mean time to detect. Among those without, 13% did, a ratio of about 2.7. Detection speed matters because the longer a fault or intruder goes unnoticed, the more time it has to cause damage. Among organizations that had completed the switch, 44% cited enhanced security as a key benefit, 30% saw faster detection, 22% reported fewer incidents and 22% said investigations took less time.
The likely reason runs through the traffic both teams already share. A performance slowdown can be the first sign of an attack. A new security control can itself cause a slowdown. When two teams use separate tools, each sees half the picture, and every handoff between them adds delay. Jim Frey, principal analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group from Informa TechTarget, said in the release that attack surfaces are expanding with increasingly sophisticated and AI-enabled threats, so NetOps and SecOps need shared visibility. Chris Labac, who leads VIAVI’s network performance and threat business, called aligning the organizational model with integrated monitoring and security platforms a critical success factor. Both point to the same lever. The variable behind the 2.7x figure is an operating model, which is why this reads as an org-chart finding rather than a product finding.
The limits deserve equal weight. The comparison is correlational. Organizations that finish convergence may already be larger, better funded or more mature, and those traits could drive better detection on their own. A significant improvement is a self-assessment, not a measured result. The benefit figures are also modest: fewer than a quarter of completers reported fewer incidents. The defensible conclusion is that convergence is associated with faster detection. Security and network leaders facing AI-era threats should therefore treat team structure as a lever alongside tooling, but merging teams does not guarantee results.
Testing Before Turning It On
The study’s second theme is structured testing. More than half of respondents cited pre-deployment validation of new technologies as their most common approach. Examples include post-quantum cryptography (encryption designed to resist future quantum computers), AI security, SASE (secure access service edge, which delivers networking and security controls as a cloud service) and cloud networking. Among respondents that test, 52% reported fewer outages and service disruptions, 44% fewer or less severe security incidents, and 42% better application performance or latency.
The problem behind this is that security work slows networks down. Inspecting, encrypting and filtering traffic all use processing capacity and can add delay. Most organizations use several countermeasures at once. Sixty-five percent use AI and machine-learning tools to tune security and performance together. Another 65% do capacity planning so security measures do not strain the network. Fifty-eight percent test network and security controls before deployment, and 58% test and tune them continuously afterward. AI therefore shows up on both sides of the problem: it is a source of new threats and a tool for managing the trade-offs.
VIAVI’s core business is test and measurement, so findings that favor testing line up with what it sells. That does not make the findings wrong, but it makes question wording and denominators more important than usual. The figures also do not fully line up. Pre-deployment validation is described as cited by more than half of respondents, while pre-deployment testing of network and security controls is put at 58%. These appear to come from different questions, and the two are not reconciled.
The Fifth That Hasn’t Started
About 18% of respondents report no completed or in-progress convergence. Frey framed the challenge as reaching these organizations and showing them the benefits. If the study’s correlation holds, these organizations sit in the group where only 13% reported a significant detection improvement, at a time when Frey describes threats as increasingly AI-enabled. For suppliers, the 45% in progress is the near-term market and the 18% is a longer-term persuasion effort. For the organizations themselves, the first step the study points to is organizational and does not require a large purchase: shared visibility between two teams that already watch the same traffic.
Background
VIAVI Solutions, based in Chandler, Arizona, and listed on Nasdaq as VIAV, describes itself as a global leader in test and measurement and optical technologies. Its products test and secure data center ecosystems and communication networks. It also supplies resilient positioning, navigation and timing systems for military, aerospace, railway and first-responder communications, plus optical technologies for anti-counterfeiting, consumer electronics, industrial and automotive markets.
State of the Network, now in its 18th edition, is VIAVI’s annual survey of network performance and security priorities; Omdia conducted this year’s research. The convergence it tracks addresses a familiar split in corporate IT. Network operations teams focus on uptime and speed, and security operations teams focus on threats, yet the two often work from separate tools and data while monitoring the same traffic. Source: VIAVI State of the Network Study: NetSecOps Deployments Increase 37% YoY, but One in Five Enterprises Still Lack a Transition Plan, VIAVI Solutions’ October 21, 2026 announcement of its Omdia-conducted survey of 750 networking and security professionals.Sources