Cisco Networking and Security Skills Now Belong Together

Cisco Enterprise Networking and Security Fundamentals: Why Network and Security Skills Now Belong Together

It’s late on a Friday afternoon and a change request lands: open a port on the edge firewall so a supplier can reach a new system. The network engineer says the rule is a security decision. The security analyst says the network team owns the firewall. Both are right, both are busy, and the ticket bounces between them until someone approves it just to get it off the board.

Meanwhile, the people trying to break in do not care which team owns the firewall. They care that it faces the internet, that it might be running old firmware, and that a rushed rule change is exactly the kind of gap they look for.

That scenario sums up one of the biggest shifts in IT over the past few years. Networking and security used to be separate careers with separate certifications and separate budgets. Today they are two halves of the same job, and the organisations that train for both together are the ones closing the gaps attackers rely on.

The line between networking and security has all but disappeared

Start with where attacks actually begin. In February 2025, the Australian Signals Directorate's Australian Cyber Security Centre, working with New Zealand's National Cyber Security Centre and other international partners, published joint guidance on securing edge devices. The warning was blunt: many threat actors, including state-sponsored groups, have made exploiting edge devices a tactic of choice.

An edge device is anything that sits at the boundary between your network and the outside world: firewalls, routers, VPN gateways, remote access appliances. Think of them as the front door, the side gate and the garage roller door all at once. Sophos found the same pattern in real incidents. Its Annual Threat Report 2025 found that network edge devices were the initial point of compromise in nearly 30 per cent of the small-and mid-sized business cases it investigated, with VPNs as the single most common entry point.

Here is why that matters for skills. People who think of themselves as network professionals install, configure, patch, and maintain every one of those devices. The network team builds the front door, and it is now the most attacked door in the house.

Three jobs that are now both networking and security

• Segmentation. Splitting a network into zones with VLANs and access control lists is classic network design. It is also one of the most effective ways to stop an intruder moving sideways from a compromised laptop to the finance server.

• Network access control. Deciding which devices are allowed onto the network, using standards such as 802.1X, is configured on switches and wireless controllers. It is also underpins zero trust.

• Device hardening. Disabling unused services, securing management access, and keeping firmware current may sound like network housekeeping. The ASD guidance also calls it essential defence for exposed devices.

For more experienced readers, there is a subtler point. The network is also the richest source of evidence when something goes wrong. Flow records, firewall logs and authentication events are often what a security team uses to reconstruct an incident. Network engineers who understand what investigators need can design for visibility from the start, rather than discovering the logging gap during the incident review.

Cisco has said the same thing with its most important certification

If you want a clear signal of where the industry is heading, look at what Cisco has done to the CCNA, its flagship associate certification. In May 2026, Cisco announced CCNA v2.0, the exam's first major redesign since 2020, which will go live on 3 February 2027. In announcing it, Cisco said security has shifted from a speciality to a baseline expectation.

The new blueprint gives Network Services and Security its own domain worth 20 per cent of the exam, adds a domain on AI and network operations, and puts much more weight on troubleshooting. In other words, Cisco no longer treats security as an optional extra for network engineers. It is part of what a competent network professional is expected to know on day one.

The current CCNA exam remains available until 2 February 2027, so anyone already preparing can finish on the existing blueprint. The credential earned is the same either way.

Where Cisco Enterprise Networking and Security Fundamentals fits

Cisco Enterprise Networking and Security Fundamentals is built for exactly this overlap. It brings together two courses: Implementing and Administering Cisco Solutions (CCNA), which prepares you for the CCNA certification, and Understanding Cisco Cybersecurity Operations Fundamentals (CCNACBR), which prepares you for CCNA Cybersecurity. Each course combines five days of instructor-led training with three days of self-study. Rather than teaching networking first and security as a separate topic later, the pair builds one skill set, which is how the work actually arrives on your desk. For teams running Cisco infrastructure, it is the practical starting point for building people who can configure a network and secure it in the same conversation.

Who should take it first?

• Network engineers picking up security duties. If you configure firewalls, VPNs or switches and keep being asked to "just check the security side", this is your bridge.

• IT generalists in small and mid-sized organisations. In many teams, one person is the network admin, the security team and the help desk. Training that joins the dots saves that person from learning two disciplines separately.

• Security analysts who need network fluency. Analysts who can read a routing table or a firewall policy investigate faster and write better recommendations.

• IT managers upskilling infrastructure teams. If your organisation runs Cisco, one shared foundation across network and security staff reduces the Friday afternoon ticket ping-pong.

Where to go next: a Cisco networking and security pathway

Start with CCNA or CCNACBR, then choose the next step by role. Here is how Lumify Work's Cisco and vendor-neutral courses line up.

A quick health check for your team

Not sure whether your team has a gap? Five questions usually tell you.

• When a firewall change is requested, is it obvious who approves it, and does that person understand both the network and the risk?

• Do you have a current list of every internet-facing device and its support end date?

• Could your network engineers explain what your security team needs from the logs during an incident?

• Could your security analysts read the network diagram and spot where segmentation is missing?

• Is network access control in place, or still on the roadmap?

If two or more answers made you wince, the problem is probably not tools. The skills sit in separate heads.

Build network and security capability with Lumify Work

Lumify Work is the largest provider of authorised Cisco training in the region, delivering official Cisco content and labs with Cisco-authorised instructors across Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines, in the classroom and online. Lumify Work has been named Cisco's ANZ Learning Partner of the Year twice.

Whether you are starting with CCNA or CCNACBR, preparing for the CCNA before the 2027 changes, or building a security specialist from your network team, the pathway above gives every role a clear next step. Already certified? Our guide to Cisco Continuing Education explains how to recertify faster. For broader options, explore the cyber security course range or read how AI is reshaping enterprise networking in our article on AI-powered networks.

Talk to Lumify Work about building a networking and security training plan for your team.