Why Microsegmentation Is Key to Enhancing Network Security

In 2024, the landscape of network breaches intensified drastically, with a notable increase in both the frequency and severity of cyberattacks. In January alone, when the “Mother of All Breaches” was uncovered, more than 26 billion records from 3,876 domains, including popular platforms such as X, LinkedIn, Adobe, Canva, and Dropbox got exposed, surpassing the total number of records breached throughout the entire 2023.

In other words, a network breach is not a matter of if, but when. So, the real question IT leaders should be asking is “How do I successfully contain an attack and limit its damage?”, rather than “How do I prevent it?”.

Beware of the lateral movement

Lateral attacks are especially prominent. After gaining an initial foothold within the network by exploiting vulnerabilities such as IoT devices, bad actors can escalate privileges to access sensitive data, compromise additional systems, or deploy a broader attack such as ransomware. According to a VMware study, as much as 45% of security intrusions involve lateral movement events, highlighting their key role in cyberattack strategies.

However having a smart lighting system hacked may sound disruptive, the theft of customer data poses a far greater threat in terms of business damage and liability. From a networking perspective, both are virtualized functions, but the potential consequences differ dramatically, emphasizing the need for secure network traffic separation.

As the network environment becomes more complex, the need for effective isolation of specific groups of users, devices, services, and applications rises. Ensuring that sensitive data and systems remain protected against unauthorized access or potential breaches is a must. However, in traditional, legacy networks, segmentation is often time-consuming and complicated, requiring box-by-box configuration and only limited to certain areas of the network…

Network traffic separation – not as easy as you might think

Many organizations approach network segmentation by utilizing multiple Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) combined with Access Control Lists (ACLs) and distributed physical or virtual firewalls. While firewalls enforce strict rules and offer robust protection, they do not address every aspect of safeguarding digital assets and can eventually become outdated. Moreover, these measures are often costly and complex to plan, deploy, and maintain--challenges further amplified in highly intricate IT environments.

This brings us to another sore point for many IT professionals: reconciling high security posture with operational efficiency, flexibility, and scalability. How to ensure network security without making our IT environment more complex and increasingly costly to manage and operate? The answer lies in fabric networks.

Extreme Fabric: it’s not mere network segmentation; it’s microsegmentation!

When it comes to network segmentation, Extreme Fabric, the industry’s most widely deployed fabric solution, has no match – both in terms of sheer security and simplicity. With this particular technology, critical applications, data, and users are isolated into private virtualized networks, known as Virtual Service Networks (VSNs). This capability, known as network microsegmentation, provides benefits across the board – from scalability, through increased stealth capabilities, to increased network performance and actual cost savings.

Security and scalability

In contrast to legacy solutions, where traditional Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) are limited to just 4,000 unique services, microsegmentation enables the creation of up to 16,000,000 (yes, sixteen million!) secure, isolated segments. On top of that, VSNs can be deployed easily and at scale, across the entire network infrastructure – from end devices to the data center. This expansive capability means that as the attack perimeter grows, so does your defense line.

The benefits of this approach are best exemplified with dynamic environments which rely on high network flexibility. For instance, the Dubai World Trade Center leverages the microsegmentation capability to quickly spin up thousands of secure network segments from event to event, delivering secure, resilient connectivity for critical on-site systems while seamlessly extending services to exhibitors and vendors. No other solution on the market can separate traffic as quickly and securely, without reconfiguring the core of the network and risking downtime as Extreme Fabric.

Stealth networking

The other key characteristic of VSNs is that they run in complete isolation, with no IP reachability in or out. Users or devices within one segment cannot communicate with those in another segment, unless explicitly configured to allow such interactions. Services extend and retract only when needed – meaning when users and devices connect and disconnect from the network. From the attacker’s perspective, a fabric network resembles a maze. Even if they manage to gain access, they can’t map the network topology and perform lateral movements, finding themselves at a dead end. This level of security discourages hackers, prompting them to throw the towel and look for easier targets.

Every organization requires effective cybersecurity solutions, but for critical sectors such as healthcare or maritime transport, this need is further exacerbated. The Port of Tallinn, one of the fastest-growing seaports in Europe, is utilizing Extreme Fabric to enable role-based network access and automatic quarantine, enabling smooth operations 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. By leveraging the microsegmentation capability, Ziekenhuis Oost-Limburg (ZOL), a major healthcare provider in Belgium, managed to securely integrate critical medical equipment, successfully addressing the influx of new use cases and technologies that came along during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Better security and performance, without complexity

What’s better than an inherently secure network? An inherently secure network that’s also easy to manage and operate! Extending security to branch offices in the same seamless way as on the main campus – without incurring extra costs – offers substantial savings. Automated, zero-touch provisioning of services streamlines network management and mitigates the risk of network downtime associated with manual configurations. At the same time, limiting access to only those who need it reduces the number of users in specific zones, boosting the overall network performance. This results in improved experiences for both IT teams, who benefit from reduced network complexity, and users, who enjoy seamless and reliable connectivity.

These benefits are especially relevant for more dispersed organizations such as education institutions or manufacturing companies. For instance, Green Bay Area Public School District, the fourth largest school district in Wisconsin, utilizes Extreme Fabric to maintain a secure and dependable network access for a large number of users – roughly 20,000 students and 4,000 staff members – across more than 30 different schools and to students at home. For Volkswagen Poznań, a Polish subsidiary of the multinational automotive giant, the simplified network management and built-in microsegmentation allow to rapidly onboard devices without interfering with network performance, enabling operational efficiencies across the board.

Unify, automate, secure

As IT environments grow increasingly complex, the need for streamlined security, monitoring, and incident response processes becomes more critical than ever. With most data breaches originating from endpoints, businesses and organizations require granular control over users and devices, along with consistent security policies across the entire network.

Learn how Extreme Fabric can help you unify, automate, and secure your network.