Best Microsegmentation Software

Your organization needs a microsegmentation solution to keep your operating system running smoothly with a minimal amount of threat surface. Microsegmentation will give your organization a greater level of protection by closely defining levels of access, creating protocols with regard to which devices can communicate with each other and across the various segments, increased granular controls, and varying multi-dimensional firewalling. Microsegmentation will allow for detailed, flexible security options per workload within your enterprise ecosystem. This will allow a greater level of security by creating unique security control protocols for each segmented workload and enable security to deliver an appropriate security response designed for each specific workload. Each microsegment allows for a greater level of isolation and an increased ability to visualize a threat risk immediately and create a repair solution quickly.

When beginning the process of moving to a microsegmentation solution, it is important to be vigilant and painstakingly thorough to ensure that nothing is missed in the process and to avoid any avoidable issues.

1. Know your traffic - Microsegmentation is complete transparency of ALL traffic flow - north-south and east-west. You will need to work with your IT team and perhaps look at third-party solutions to get a complete understanding of the current appropriate ongoing communication and active productive connections between workloads. This will facilitate the identification of unnecessary connections which need to be closed.

1. Identify your segments - Next, you will want to identify your segments. The most common ones are function, location, class, security threat, and distinction. These identifiers will help with regulating communication flows throughout your workflows. These identifiers or tags will help when adding third-party solutions and scalability. They will also play a big part with increased security options as you make changes to your plan.

1. Establish concise security protocols - You will want to identify the level of threat risk that is unique to your organization and the microsegmentation attributes you have created. These protocols should be extremely thorough and address every type of communication flow and every device with access to your network and how they will all relate to each other. You will want to take a deep dive into your entire ecosystem to ensure every workflow has been considered. The zero-trust concept must be applied and all traffic must be identified, categorized, and verified to securely reduce the chance of any threat to your organization. Within the zero-trust concept, any unknowns must be denied access and considered a potential threat risk.

1. Scalability is a must - Organizations are growing and changing - sometimes, daily. You need to create the option to make adjustments and adapt to changes as your organization changes. Complete workflow transparency allows for immediate identification of changes in workflow and complete awareness of any changes to the threat surface. You will want your system to be able to identify new workloads and auto-tag them with known identifiers.

1. Implement your plan - Start slow. You want to roll out your plan slowly and with solid communication to all members of your project team, (security, tech, architect, etc). It’s best to start small, test your plan, gain feedback, test again, then add new workloads to your rollout plan. During every step in your rollout process, you want to ensure protocols are workable and being followed consistently. If any problems develop, it is important to address them immediately and make the necessary adjustments to your plan, communicate the changes to the team, and continue to the next segment based on your set priorities. Once the entire rollout is complete, continue to regularly follow up to make certain all protocols are being satisfied and everything is working according to plan.

Below are just a few of the benefits of microsegmentation:

• Create the ability to keep segments/workloads isolated.
• Defined access between segments/workloads, increased efficacy, and profitability.
• Enhanced threat awareness and reaction time.
• Increased ability to meet compliance regulations.
• Minimized threat surface.
• Improved threat response.

Microsegmentation is fast becoming one of the most desired must-have solutions in today’s burgeoning market. Although a relatively new concept, microsegmentation coupled with zero-trust protocols will become the de facto way security management will be done. When choosing a microsegmentation software, consideration needs to be given to the amount of granular control desired and the threat risk per each defined segment.

Here are some basic key features to look for when choosing the best microsegmentation software for your organization. It should:

• Address all servers, VMs, and every device with access to your network.
• Be able to highlight complete transparency to all segments in your ecosystem.
• Allow solution and segment identification.
• Offer a solid life-cycle perspective to effectively visualize security protocol processes at work from start to finish.
• Be easy to use and update.
• Be available in on-premises, hybrid, and cloud solutions.