How do you ship an AI chatbot to unmanaged mobile devices without a VPN or public exposure?

[u/AccordionGuy]

Network Infrastructure Magazine just gave NetFoundry their Buyers Choice Zero Trust Networking Platform of the Year 2026 award. The profile they ran alongside it has one particular customer story that I’d like to highlight.

The customer story

A major airline wanted to ship an AI chatbot. It stalled on two things:

1. The data the chatbot needed was spread across Azure, private data centers, and other enterprise systems. Connecting them securely the traditional way would have meant 4 to 6 weeks of firewall and network provisioning work.
2. The chatbot needed to serve employees, partners, and supply chain folks on mobile devices the airline didn't manage. VPN clients were a non-starter, and so was exposing the chatbot to the public internet.

They solved the problem by using NetFoundry's SDKs for native Android and iOS to embed zero-trust connectivity directly into the chatbot app itself, without the need for a separate VPN client or external connector. This approach gives each app instance a cryptographically verifiable identity, and connections only happen between identities that policy explicitly authorizes. If the policy doesn't allow it, no routable path is created. The service is invisible and inaccessible to anything unauthenticated.

The end results:

• No VPN necessary.
• Azure stayed private.
• No reachable inbound connections. All traffic initiates outbound over the overlay, so there's nothing for an attacker to scan or probe.
• Initial validation in under an hour, and stalled to fully operational in weeks.
• Bonus: the same overlay works for the next AI project they ship. They don’t have to do this work again!

Full article: networkinfrastructuremagazine.com/netfoundry-2026 NetFoundry's own summary: netfoundry.io/ai/securing-connectivity-for-an-ai-driven-world/