Lessons from 2021: Damming the flood with micro-segmentation

We can’t always stop the bad guys from getting in, but we can stop them from wreaking havoc. Professor Avishai Wool, AlgoSec CTO, summarizes notable breaches from 2021 and explains the role of micro-segmentation

Breaches can happen as attackers increasingly pursue organizations for nefarious reasons. Despite having protective measures in place and IT security spending increasing, cybercrime has risen by 600% over the last 18 months as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Intruders are getting wiser and methods such as spear phishing, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) and ransomware have made it difficult for organizations to keep the bad guys out. 2021 was fraught with some of the largest breaches on record. Let’s review some of them.

Kaseya targeted by ransomware attack 

Hackers infiltrated Florida-based information technology firm Kaseya and deployed a supply chain ransomware attack, in which it directly threatened its customers while seizing troves of data and demanding $70m in payment for its return.

T-Mobile confirms large scale data breach

In August, mobile services provider giant T-Mobile reported that data from 850,000 of its US prepaid customers and more than 40 million records of former or prospective customers had been stolen. The data included a range of sensitive information such as first and last names, birth dates, Social Security numbers and driver’s license information. Despite this, however, there was no indication that any financial information was stolen.

Ransomware strikes global meat supplier

In June, the world’s biggest meat processing company, JBS, fell victim to a ransomware attack. The company, based in Brazil, reported that computer networks had been hacked, causing a temporary shutdown of their operations in the US, Australia and Canada. In the end, they were forced to pay the equivalent of $11m (£7.8m) in ransom to put an end to a major cyber-attack. 

Reducing the damage with micro-segmentation

It is impossible for companies to be fully protected against these kinds of attacks, but the good news going forward is that this impact can be reduced drastically through micro-segmentation. 

Micro-segmentation minimizes the damage hackers can do once they gain access by stopping lateral movement across your networks. Just as the watertight compartments in a ship should contain flooding if the hull is breached, segmentation isolates servers and systems into separate zones to contain intruders or malware as well as insider threats, limiting the potential of unexpected security risks and minimizing its damage.

Simplifying micro-segmentation through security automation

Automated network management makes it much easier for companies to define and enforce their micro-segmentation strategy. It also ensures that critical business services are not blocked due to misconfiguration and that compliance requirements are met while performing application discovery autonomously. 

The AlgoSec platform makes it easy to define and enforce your micro-segmentation strategy inside the data center, ensuring that it does not block any critical business services and meets compliance requirements.

AlgoSec’s powerful AutoDiscovery capabilities help you gain full visibility of the network flows in your organization. It allows you to automatically connect the recognized traffic flows to the business applications that use them. Once the segments are established, AlgoSec seamlessly manages the network security policy across your entire hybrid network estate. Beyond that, it proactively checks every proposed firewall rule change request against the segmentation strategy to ensure that the change doesn’t break the segmentation strategy, introduce risk, or violate compliance requirements.

We have created a dedicated hub where you can find out more about the role of micro-segmentation in policy management. It offers a series of valuable tutorials and whitepapers on how you can create your own micro-segmentation strategy and insights from our experts. We also encourage you to learn more about AlgoSec by scheduling a personal demo.