What Is a Network Segmentation Policy?

The need for a flexible network segmentation policy Engine

Network segmentation — and microsegmentation in particular — can deliver powerful protection for your IT environment. Segmentation strategies abolish the traditional approach to security that focuses on building a strong wall around the network perimeter. Instead, network segmentation places perimeters around subnetworks, applications, or even individual IT assets, allowing access only for legitimate purposes and stopping attacks that spread via lateral movement.

While this approach can be highly effective, managing network segmentation policy can be complex. When policies are too narrow, you end up with an inflexible environment and workload bottlenecks. If set too broadly, you’ll have an attack surface that is dangerously large. The right network segmentation security solution should offer the flexibility to set policies with granular precision while also streamlining processes to minimize the burden on security teams.

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is a software-based segmentation solution that combines deep visibility into IT environments with a flexible network segmentation policy engine.

The challenge of enforcing network segmentation policy

In theory, network segmentation policy should help to ensure that only authorized applications and users have access to critical IT assets. When done well, this can prevent the spread of malicious attacks and help to meet security and compliance requirements. However, there are several challenges in hybrid IT environments that make creating and enforcing policies more difficult.

Establishing policies with the right scope. Ultra-granular policies may be more secure, but they can also limit communication flexibility, causing delays for the business.

Controlling the size of the attack surface. Policies that are written too broadly may leave too many parts of your network exposed to potential attack.

Staying adaptable. Policies must allow for changes in business requirements, upgrades in technology, and an evolving threat landscape.

Creating policies that scale. Network segmentation policy must be able to accommodate networks with thousands of workloads at various locations.

Enforcing on multiple levels. Policies that can be enforced at both the network and process levels can dramatically reduce risk.

Among network segmentation design solutions, microsegmentation offers the best way to solve these challenges. Microsegmentation allows you to secure your data center from the inside, meet compliance requirements easily, gain visibility into east-west traffic, and put a stop to lateral movement. 

When choosing a network segmentation policy engine, you want a solution that offers the flexibility to use both allow and block rules, as well as technology that enforces policy at the process and network level. This will allow you to eliminate a lot of risk fast, using a small number of rules. And a policy engine that provides deep visibility and a real-time view of dependencies can help you create more accurate policies to strengthen security posture without limiting agility.

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation: a software-defined segmentation solution

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation delivers all the features and benefits you need for managing successful microsegmentation and segmentation policy. As a software-defined solution, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is decoupled from the physical network to provide a faster and more cost-effective alternative to firewalls. Designed for the agile enterprise, our technology provides greater security and visibility in the cloud, data center, and endpoints.

In contrast to other segmentation solutions like VLANs and legacy firewalls, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation offers a network segmentation policy engine that integrates deep visibility of the entire IT network. From a single pane of glass, IT operators can automatically visualize the entire data center environment across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid cloud infrastructure. Best-in-class visibility provides insight into applications, workloads, and communication flows. This makes it easy to label and group all assets, and helps to stream development of network segmentation policy. 

When setting policy, operators can click on any communication flow in a network segmentation diagram to generate suggestions for automatic rules and quickly build a strong security policy. Intuitive workflows and a flexible network segmentation policy engine make it easy to continuously refine policies and reduce costly errors. With Akamai, IT teams can maintain consistent security controls, regardless of the underlying infrastructure.

Benefits for managing network segmentation policy

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation delivers significant benefits for IT operators managing network segmentation and microsegmentation networks.

Block lateral movement. Lateral movement is the way that attackers expand their level of access once they’ve gained a foothold in a trusted environment. It’s difficult to detect, as it can blend in with legitimate traffic. Akamai Guardicore Segmentation enables IT teams to create proactive policies that prevent lateral movement based on real-time and historical visibility of all east-west traffic.

Reduce attack surface. With greater visibility into an IT environment and more granular control over network segmentation policy, IT teams can develop stronger strategies for reducing the size of the attack surface. This is particularly important, as the transition to hybrid cloud models tends to create many new areas of potential exposure.

Secure critical applications. Akamai Guardicore Segmentation enables granular microsegmentation security policies that make it easier to create boundaries around sensitive or regulated data, even when it spans multiple environments and platforms.

Streamline management. Rich, built-in integration with familiar orchestration tools simplifies deployment and automation in any complex environment.

Why Akamai Guardicore Segmentation?

Provide coverage for more of your environment. Akamai Guardicore Segmentation protects your critical assets no matter where they’re deployed. It also enables you to enforce the same level of granular, process-level rules across different operating environments.

Implement segmentation without downtime. A software-based approach lets you implement network segmentation policy with no changes to networks or applications and no downtime.

Increase speed of resolution. Akamai Guardicore Segmentation supports incident response by enabling you to reduce security incident resolution time by up to 96%.

Simplify management of segmentation policy. Akamai Guardicore Segmentation delivers centralized management across all environments — on-premises, cloud, and hybrid cloud — allowing administrators to visualize environments, segment assets, and detect threats from a single pane of glass.

Integrate segmentation with other security tools. Akamai Guardicore Segmentation offers rich, built-in integration with orchestration tools and 50+ other security and infrastructure management tools. An open REST API enables you to create your own integrations as needed.

Streamline compliance efforts. Because it’s designed for policy creation and management, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation makes it easy to validate network-related compliance policies. Save money and reduce scope with network segmentation for PCI DSS.