Received 15.08.2025, Revised 11.11.2025, Accepted 23.12.2025

Synergy of artificial intelligence, SDN, Zero Trust, and blockchain: An overview of new trends in secure network management

Oleksandr Pidpalyi, Oleksandr Romanov

The research relevance is determined by the need to create effective, transparent, and cyberattackprotected network management systems. The study aimed to systematise and critically analyse current approaches to combining artificial intelligence, software-defined networks, Zero-Trust architecture and blockchain to build adaptive, transparent and cyberattack-proof network management systems. A conceptual review of secure network management technologies was conducted using interpretative and comparative analysis of scientific sources, systemic and structural-categorical analysis of the characteristics of software-defined networks, Zero Trust architecture, blockchain, and artificial intelligence, and modelling scenarios for their application to improve the adaptability, transparency, and resilience of network systems in critical sectors of Ukraine. The results showed that the combined use of these technologies provides centralised traffic management, dynamic access policies, transparency of operations, and the ability to autonomously detect threats, significantly increasing the resilience of the network to multi-vector cyber-attacks. The study determined that the main problems of integrating these technologies into network systems are the opacity of artificial intelligence solutions, conflicts between the dynamism of models and the immutability of blockchain, high resource requirements, and the complexity of policy coordination in multi-domain networks. The implementation of Explainable Artificial Intelligence, hybrid architectures, off-chain solutions, model optimisation, and federated protocols has overcome limitations, providing a transparent, adaptive, and secure network system capable of responding effectively to threats and dynamic changes in the environment. The results showed that traditional solutions based on static firewalls and centralised control are limited in terms of response speed, attack detection accuracy and scalability. Integrated models combining artificial intelligence, software-defined networking, Zero-Trust architecture, and blockchain provide instant threat response, highly accurate attack detection, dynamic access control, automated auditing, and effective scalability, creating an adaptive, resilient, and transparent network system. The results of the study can be used to develop and optimise cybersecurity policies, automate access control and network event monitoring, and build scalable and transparent architectures of management systems

network security; cyber defence; intrusion detection; machine learning; explainable artificial intelligence
148-163
Pidpalyi, O., & Romanov, O. (2025). Synergy of artificial intelligence, SDN, Zero Trust, and blockchain: An overview of new trends in secure network management. Information Technologies and Computer Engineering, 22(3), 148-163. https://doi.org/10.31649/vitce/3.2025.148

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