Merill Fernando welcomes viewers to Microsoft’s October “Identity and Network Practitioner” webinar series and digs into the new IDC white paper, “Empowering Employees Through Secure Access.” Joined by Kaitlin Murphy from Microsoft and Christopher Rodriguez, research director on the IDC Security and Trust team, he unpacks why organizations are pushing toward a unified identity and network strategy in the AI era—and how that shift helps reduce risk while improving efficiency. The conversation spotlights a practical Zero Trust lens: breaking down identity/network silos, using Microsoft Entra Suite and the Entra portal to bring teams together, and applying controls like Conditional Access. They also connect today’s “foundation” tools (firewalls, VPN, intrusion prevention) to what’s next—SASE and Zero Trust Network Access migrations—plus what practitioners are measuring in the real world, like mean time to remediation, ticket volume, and reductions in VPN sessions.
We produced this as a pre-recorded, streamed event designed to feel easy and natural on-camera—while the complicated bits stayed safely in our remote studio and edit bays. We handled show development, designed the graphics package, prepped the guests, produced the footage, edited it into a clean, confident episode, and streamed it to multiple social channels using our streaming platform. The result: a polished digital event that keeps your experts comfortable, your message crisp, and your on-demand replay ready to keep working long after the live moment.
The inevitable sequels
Hollywood keeps stretching good ideas into progressively worse sequels. We don’t. These are the related videos—spiritual siblings of the one you just watched—as good or better than this video. Expect callbacks, new plot twists, and maybe even a scene-stealing cameo from a lower third.
