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Zero Trust Segmentation

8 Reasons Why the Banking Sector Should Use Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation

In a world of constant high-profile breaches, it's more important than ever to stay ahead of the curve.

Ransomware's growing sophistication is a reality to which everyone must adapt, and the banking and financial services sector is chief amongst them. In fact, the banking industry has been the top target for cybercriminals for 5 years straight from 2016 to 2020.

In such a precarious landscape, it's no wonder Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation (ZTS), also called microsegmentation, has taken center stage in the fight to thwart ransomware. For industries at heightened risk for cyber disasters like banking and financial services, Zero Trust architecture is critical.

Watch this video to learn the 3 main ways ZTS helps financial organizations:

Read on for 8 reasons why banking and financial services should implement ZTS.

1. Protects high-value, franchise-critical systems

The financial industry's systems are critical not just for individual organizations' operational success and continuity - they keep the world's economy running. Core banking applications, payments infrastructure, and trading environments must be secured against inevitable, and potentially catastrophic, security breaches.

Illumio ZTS helps protect customer data and keep operations up-and-runny by helping security teams understand access to systems, implement security policies to limit systems access, and report and analyze all traffic that doesn't match rules.

2. Supports the fulfillment of compliance requirements

In one of the most regulated and scrutinized industries, financial services CISOs are under pressure to strengthen cyberdefense and meet tightening compliance requirements.

Regulatory and industry bodies around the world are mandating or recommending increased visibility, improved segmentation of IT assets, and a transition to Zero Trust architectures. These include ISO 27001, PCIDSS, SWIFT, and COBIT, along with standards from organizations including the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Center for Internet Security.

Illumio ZTS helps fulfill these requirements by scoping vulnerabilities across the full environment, mapping application dependencies, applying granular segmentation policies, and monitoring connectivity for vulnerability and compliance violations.

3. Consistent visibility across a highly varied technology estate

Illumio ZTS is purpose-built for the hybrid world, offering mapping of all communications between assets, including applications, clouds, containers, data centers and endpoint devices.

And it does this without touching or changing your network.

With Illumio, you can:

  • Build real-time network visibility by automatically map the internal communications and outbound Internet connections for each of your applications, systems, and workloads.
  • Lower operational risk by identifying unnecessary connections by building a clear picture of your vulnerable systems, noncompliant data flows, and excessive communications.
  • Share a unified view of your communications for your teams and your SIEM/SOAR tools with customized views for Network Ops, Security Ops, DevOps and DevSecOps. Feed real-time data to your SIEM or SOAR.

Consistent visibility is increasingly important as a hybrid model becomes the norm.

Learn more about Illumination, Illumio's application dependency mapping tool, here.

4. Delivers efficient, measurable ROI

Research shows that organizations who have adopted Zero Trust Segmentation save an estimated $20.1 million annually in avoiding application downtime. In today's uncertain economic climate, it's more important than ever that the banking industry can ensure maximum return on their security investment.

Illumio ZTS provides reliable and scalable breach containment, giving you the peace of mind that security breaches won't become disasters.

And Illumio allows you to test the impact of segmentation before you put it in place. It won't break the applications you're trying to protect, helping your security team run as efficiently as possible.

Hear from our customers about how Illumio delivers reliable security ROI in this article.

5. Enable rapid digital transformation

A Zero Trust security approach the includes ZTS opens the door to faster digital transformation. This is a must-have in today's increasingly hybrid, interconnected world.

These transformations also have the benefit of clearly aligning with business outcomes, like securing both on-premises and cloud applications consistently, and by integrating with DevOps processes to automate security at scale.

6. Secure the migration of applications to the cloud

To gain the benefits of migrating to the cloud, it is important to be able to maintain the same security levels and keep critical consumer data and applications safe.

With some older versions of Windows going to end of support, lifting those workloads and running them in the cloud makes sense. Doing this means that existing network-based security controls disappear.

Illumio ZTS is independent of the infrastructure, allowing you to move workloads to the cloud and keep the existing security policies and controls in place.

Do you have a cloud migration plan in place? Read about the 4 steps you need to take to build a plan today. 

7. Mitigate the threat to unpatchable and unpatched systems

It is often difficult to manage and prioritize the complex process of patching systems.

There are so many patches that need to be applied on a daily basis to a huge variety of different systems. Most organizations have developed a well-defined process that identifies, tests, and applies patches.

However, there are 3 major challenges security teams face when trying to get vulnerabilities patched:

  • Patches cannot be done instantly, and so there will be a lag between the release of a patch and its installation.
  • It can take time to generate a patch for vulnerabilities after they're discovered.
  • Some devices are not supported anymore, making them unpatchable.

The risk to unpatched devices can be mitigated by using Illumio ZTS to restrict the exposure of individual systems. This means the network is still protected even when patches cannot or still need to be applied.

8. Automated incident response to ransomware

It's important to define a plan in the event of a ransomware attack. During an active breach, it can be exceedingly difficult to harness endpoint protection systems for detection and response.

The fastest and most effective response is to contain the breach by stopping the method of communication that the ransomware is using to spread through the network. Illumio ZTS can instantly stop the propagation of ransomware by locking down the ports that the attack will use to spread.

Get more information in our guide to Zero Trust Segmentation in Banking and Financial Services.

Ready to learn more about Illumio ZTS? Contact us for a consultation and demo today.

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