Technology has advanced exponentially in the past few decades. Information and data are now simply available at the click of a button. To create such a convenient infrastructure, there are multiple complex and intricate systems in place within a data center. With such a large system in place, it’s a lot easier to become the target of a cyber-attack. This is why microsegmentation exists.
What Is Microsegmentation?
Essentially, microsegmentation (or micro-segmentation) is a security measure that helps to prevent threat actors from gaining access across the network. It does this by isolating different areas of your network into smaller and more secure sections – or segments.
Think of your network as a house with multiple rooms. Each room represents a different element inside your network – like your apps, networking, and data. When malware enters the network, it tries immediately tries to spread and move to different rooms. With microsegmentation, each room has its locked door.
This prevents the malware from spreading laterally to other segments of the network and allows your cybersecurity system to act without disrupting the entire network. This feature also prevents people from accessing unauthorized areas of the network that might contain sensitive information. Additionally, microsegmentation can divide the network according to individual workloads.
How Does Microsegmentation Work?
The entire purpose of micro-segmentation is to reduce the attack surface of the network. Secure areas are created across on-premises data center, cloud, and hybrid network environments. To achieve this, each segment has a “wall” built around it, preventing threats from moving across the network. Each segment is then equipped with its own smaller security perimeter.
Micro-segmentation can also be applied to specific devices and systems with custom security settings. This provides granular control and ideal visibility across the network. Threats can also be identified a lot faster within a segmented network.
Approaches to Micro-segmentation
Network micro-segmentation can be implemented according to the network layer you want to be divided up. Each layer has a different approach but all of them have the same end goal – to secure the network.
Network-Based
A network-based approach to micro-segmentation takes place on the network layer. VLANs are used to create segments while policies are configured and enforced using IP constructs or ACLs. While it is quite simple to implement, it can create bottlenecks - becoming expensive and complicated to control.
Hypervisor-Based
All network traffic passes through the hypervisor which makes it an ideal place to install micro-segmentation. This approach can be used with existing firewalls and makes it easier to shift security policies from one hypervisor to another.
It also features a few downsides like decreased process visibility, vendor lock-ins, and general limitations for cloud environments or with bare metal, container, or physical workloads.
Host-Based
Using a software-defined framework, a host-based approach uses the built-in firewall capabilities of each workload to ensure fine-grained and distributed security policies. Micro-segmentation is then dependent on positioning agents at endpoint hosts to increase central visibility. This can be time-consuming and complicated sometimes.
Benefits of Microsegmentation
Microsegmentation presents several advantages for a network. Some of the benefits include:
- Minimizing the Attack Surface.The key advantage of microsegmentation is its ability to isolate threats. This decreases the surface area of your network that’s vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Malware and threat actors cannot move laterally across the network and have to remain confined to the segment they’re in.
- Rapid Response to Threats. Microsegmentation improves the overall visibility of the network and allows your cybersecurity team to identify and respond to threat actors in real time. The containment of each segment also ensures that breaches can remain isolated and cause no further damage to the network.
- Improved Security. Cybersecurity relies on visibility across the network. In this way, microsegmentation improves your IT protection. Individual segments and network traffic can be closely monitored for anomalies or suspicious behavior.
- Enhancing Control. Your network is filled with critical workloads and sensitive information on clients and the like. Microsegmentation ensures that you have granular, steady, and reliable control of every crucial workload within the network. Since security policies for each segment can be modified as needed, critical workloads can also be fitted with more advanced protection. In this way, microsegmentation also makes it easier to abide by regulatory compliance for your company.
ZTNA and Microsegmentation
Gartner defines Zero-Trust Network Access – or ZTNA – as a product or service that creates an access boundary around an application or set of applications based on identity or context. This cybersecurity technology goes under the assumption that every attempt to access the network should be reviewed and assumed to be dangerous.
A zero-trust approach to cybersecurity denies implicit trust and maintains your network’s safety by restricting movement across the network unnecessarily. Microsegmentation is based on and enables Zero-Trust architecture.
Both approaches are very similar in that they limit lateral movement across the network and rely on segmentation to isolate workloads. Consider microsegmentation as the practice of everything zero-trust security models teach us.
Sangfor Access Secure
Sangfor’s cloud-native SASE solution, Sangfor Access Secure, implements Zero-Trust Network Access (ZTNA) to validate user and device access to cloud applications and services from anywhere in the world.
Access is only granted to authorized business applications based on preconfigured policies and user profiles. The integration of network and security functions creates a unified service. The platform also allows for rapid identification of cyber threats and malicious traffic.
Through its cloud-based service delivery model, Sangfor Access Secure delivers a wide range of networking and security functions, including SD-WAN, WAN optimization, SWG, CASB, NGFW, and ZTNA.
Sangfor has also been listed as one of the examples in the 2022 “Gartner Emerging Technologies: Adoption Growth Insights for Zero Trust Network Access” report for providing ZTNA technology.
For more information on Sangfor’s cyber security and cloud computing solutions, visit www.sangfor.com.
