Confluent Platform 7.9 has been released, building upon Apache Kafka 3.9, with key capabilities including Oracle XStream CDC Source Connector for secure and reliable streaming of change events, Confluent for VS Code to streamline development, Client-Side Field Level Encryption (CSFLE) for securing sensitive data, and a unified security experience across Confluent Platform with OAuth support for ksqlDB and Flink. This release also includes enhancements to Confluent Control Center, the official Confluent Node.js client for Apache Kafka, KRaft mode improvements, and Ansible Playbooks for Confluent Platform support. With this release, organizations can modernize their data infrastructure, eliminate integration complexity, and unlock real-time intelligence while reducing costs and accelerating innovation.