The 2025 Cisco Segmentation Report, with 1,000 respondents, was launched final month and has prompted me to assume extra deeply concerning the evolution of the decades-old cybersecurity idea and the way it continues to adapt to fulfill the wants of recent enterprises. I beforehand wrote that whereas 79% of respondents contemplate segmentation a high precedence, solely 33% implement it absolutely. The survey outcomes additionally revealed fascinating insights into why segmentation stays a foundational idea.
The evolution of segmentation and the event of various segmentation approaches make the idea excellent for implementing a proactive strategy to enterprise cybersecurity in the present day. For years, organizations have utilized macro-segmentation to divide networks into smaller sections, which helps restrict the unfold of profitable assaults whereas enhancing general resilience. And now, augmenting macro-segmentation with micro-segmentation implementations permits safety groups to separate environments into separate networks AND isolate particular workloads primarily based on habits or id. This twin segmentation strategy is well-suited to guard in the present day’s distributed, cloud-first community infrastructure and the purposes, information, and customers that depend on these essential networks.
That is the primary a part of a three-part collection that delves deeper into the survey outcomes and what they reveal concerning the present state of segmentation.
Macro-Segmentation (On It’s Personal) Is Not Sufficient to Meet Right this moment’s Cybersecurity Challenges
Macro-segmentation alone is inadequate on account of current modifications in trendy software structure. Fashionable purposes are now not monolithic, and they’re now not constrained by a subnet or VLAN. Because of this, these purposes are decentralized and composed of a number of workloads. This new decentralized structure has boosted software efficiency, scalability, maintainability, and reliability; nonetheless, it has made it difficult to grasp what’s occurring on the workload stage.
Nevertheless, the shortage of visibility and management on the workload stage makes conventional safety approaches (together with macro-segmentation) difficult. It’s no surprise that cybersecurity groups are struggling to guard in the present day’s extremely distributed, cloud-first digital infrastructures.
Organizations Have to Implement Macro-Segmentation and Micro-Segmentation in Tandem
Augmenting macro-segmentation with micro-segmentation implementations allows safety groups to separate IT environments into sections whereas isolating particular person workloads primarily based on their habits or id. This permits a proactive strategy to cybersecurity, leading to quicker restoration occasions, improved operations, and constant enforcement of segmentation insurance policies.
1. Faster Restoration Instances
Respondents from organizations which have absolutely carried out each macro- and micro-segmentation report that breach containment and restoration take a mean of 20 days to finish. In distinction, respondents from organizations that haven’t absolutely carried out each macro- and micro-segmentation report that restoration takes them a mean of 29 days.
This can be a massive, massive deal. Slicing restoration time by one-third limits the breach’s impression and prevents its future unfold. Simply think about the injury that menace actors can inflict in these further 9 days. The mixture of macro- and micro-segmentation slows down attackers. It additionally supplies defenders with extra visibility and management over particular person workloads, providing insights into the assault chain that allow them to shortly establish which belongings must be quarantined, taken offline, and recovered.
2. An Alternative to Align Groups
Segmentation initiatives require coordination throughout a number of groups with a number of layers of duty, necessitating full alignment all through the group. For instance, a growth group is aware of who created an software, however it might not have visibility into who’s utilizing the appliance or how the appliance is getting used. A failure to coordinate throughout groups can result in over-permissioning—a standard mistake that creates important dangers for organizations.
Based on the survey, organizations (typically) depend on three separate groups for implementing and managing segmentation—IT infrastructure or community (87%), Safety/ SecOps (77%), and DevOps/ Cloud Engineering (71%). The method of implementing each macro- and micro-segmentation can enhance alignment between these groups and get rid of a lot of the danger related to over-permissioning. Persevering with with our growth group instance, the drive towards segmentation can carry the event group nearer to these managing and securing the community by establishing a standard vocabulary and shared aims.
Amongst survey respondents at organizations which have absolutely carried out each macro- and micro-segmentation, 87% report that their groups are absolutely aligned, in contrast with 52% of these at organizations with out full implementation.
3. Constant Enforcement
Based on the report, two-thirds (63%) of respondents at organizations with full implementation strongly agree that automation is essential to scaling and maturing segmentation initiatives, versus 50% with out full implementation of each. Automation allows organizations to scale their segmentation insurance policies throughout the complete group (or no less than the place it is smart), leading to extra complete and constant enforcement, and finally, stronger safety controls. Organizations that don’t make use of satisfactory automation should manually create and keep insurance policies, which might simply fall behind safety necessities over time.
A Twin Method Allows a Proactive Cybersecurity Technique
The flexibility to implement micro-segmentation at scale at the side of macro-segmentation has turn out to be foundational to trendy enterprise safety methods and the zero-trust safety mannequin. This permits organizations to get better extra shortly, higher align their groups, and implement segmentation extra constantly—together, permitting for a proactive strategy to cybersecurity. Though segmentation is an previous idea (from an IT perspective, after all), it stays a essential part of a proactive enterprise safety strategy—primarily on account of its adaptation for contemporary environments.
In my subsequent weblog, I’ll define the challenges organizations are going through in the present day when implementing segmentation initiatives. Within the meantime, obtain the 2025 Cisco Segmentation Report to higher perceive the state of segmentation in the present day.
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