The 2025 Cisco Segmentation Report, with 1,000 respondents, was launched final month and has prompted me to suppose extra deeply in regards to the evolution of the decades-old cybersecurity idea and the way it continues to adapt to satisfy the wants of recent enterprises. I beforehand wrote that whereas 79% of respondents think about segmentation a high precedence, solely 33% implement it absolutely. The survey outcomes additionally revealed attention-grabbing insights into why segmentation stays a foundational idea.
The evolution of segmentation and the event of various segmentation approaches make the idea ideally suited for implementing a proactive strategy to enterprise cybersecurity right this moment. 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 identification. This twin segmentation strategy is well-suited to guard right this moment’s distributed, cloud-first community infrastructure and the purposes, information, and customers that depend on these important networks.
That is the primary a part of a three-part sequence that delves deeper into the survey outcomes and what they reveal in regards to the present state of segmentation.
Macro-Segmentation (On It’s Personal) Is Not Sufficient to Meet At this time’s Cybersecurity Challenges
Macro-segmentation alone is inadequate as a consequence of latest modifications in trendy utility structure. Trendy purposes are not monolithic, and they’re 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 utility efficiency, scalability, maintainability, and reliability; nevertheless, it has made it difficult to grasp what’s taking place on the workload degree.
Nonetheless, the shortage of visibility and management on the workload degree makes conventional safety approaches (together with macro-segmentation) difficult. It’s no marvel that cybersecurity groups are struggling to guard right this moment’s extremely distributed, cloud-first digital infrastructures.
Organizations Must Implement Macro-Segmentation and Micro-Segmentation in Tandem
Augmenting macro-segmentation with micro-segmentation implementations permits safety groups to separate IT environments into sections whereas isolating particular person workloads primarily based on their habits or identification. This allows 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 median 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 median of 29 days.
It is a large, large deal. Slicing restoration time by one-third limits the breach’s influence and prevents its future unfold. Simply think about the harm that risk actors can inflict in these extra 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 rapidly determine which belongings must be quarantined, taken offline, and recovered.
2. An Alternative to Align Groups
Segmentation tasks require coordination throughout a number of groups with a number of layers of accountability, necessitating full alignment all through the group. For instance, a growth workforce is aware of who created an utility, however it could not have visibility into who’s utilizing the applying or how the applying is getting used. A failure to coordinate throughout groups can result in over-permissioning—a typical mistake that creates vital 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 remove a lot of the danger related to over-permissioning. Persevering with with our growth workforce instance, the drive towards segmentation can convey the event workforce nearer to these managing and securing the community by establishing a typical 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 tasks, versus 50% with out full implementation of each. Automation permits organizations to scale their segmentation insurance policies throughout the whole group (or at the least the place it is sensible), leading to extra complete and constant enforcement, and finally, stronger safety controls. Organizations that don’t make use of enough automation should manually create and preserve insurance policies, which may simply fall behind safety necessities over time.
A Twin Method Allows a Proactive Cybersecurity Technique
The power to implement micro-segmentation at scale along with macro-segmentation has change into foundational to trendy enterprise safety methods and the zero-trust safety mannequin. This allows organizations to recuperate extra rapidly, higher align their groups, and implement segmentation extra persistently—together, permitting for a proactive strategy to cybersecurity. Though segmentation is an outdated idea (from an IT perspective, in fact), it stays a important element of a proactive enterprise safety strategy—primarily as a consequence of its adaptation for contemporary environments.
In my subsequent weblog, I’ll define the challenges organizations are going through right this moment when implementing segmentation tasks. Within the meantime, obtain the 2025 Cisco Segmentation Report to raised perceive the state of segmentation right this moment.
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