In this age of information, offices are disappearing and remote work is becoming the norm. As such, companies won’t need to invest too much in offices, cubicles, and equipment when most workers will be able to work safely from home. Aside from the workforce, a company’s network is the neural center of every operation and administrative task that have to be done for the day. If a company’s workforce is the muscle, the network would be the brains. Of course, since the company’s network will contain much-needed sensitive information, the last thing that everyone wants is it to go down.

Cybersecurity has been a backbone in any IT industry, and for good reason: Companies are always clamoring for the best in the business to secure their files. As the years go by, new ways of protecting networks are devised. One of these cybersecurity strategies is network micro-segmentation.

Most of the time, we compartmentalize different aspects of our lives so that one aspect won’t affect the other. For instance, after going home after a long day at work, we might be thinking about some unresolved issues at the office, but we realize that there’s no need to think about that if we’re not even at work.

In the same way, most of us don’t talk about work and business when we’re with people who are not familiar with your industry. While the majority of these aspects of your life make up your identity, you won’t need to boast all of these ‘segments’ to people.

In the same way, a segmented and compartmentalized network can be more secure than a centralized interface. But what makes this type of system more secure, and how does it handle security?

Why You Should Compartmentalize

But besides all of these analogies on what network compartmentalization is, what is it really about? Well, network compartmentalization will help protect the system in case of a cyber attack. Let’s say that there’s a replicating virus that wants to spread out across the whole network.

Since the network is segmented, it can only stay within the confines of that one segment without affecting the rest. This strategy is a tried-and-tested way of mitigating damage and data loss from malicious entities.But what are the benefits of compartmentalizing your network? Here’s what we’ve found:

Multiple Security Measures

The central premise of cybersecurity is that multiple walls of protection are better than just having one security measure put in place. For most people, having only one defensive wall might protect against threats, but what would happen if that veil of protection was ever to go down?

Just like a castle, a multi-layered and segmented perimeter is better than just having at least one line of defense. If a specific malicious entity were ever to access a company’s network, they would be quarantined in that one segment of the system, therefore keeping all the other segments safe.

Critical Information Prioritization

Naturally, your network serves the purpose of protecting critical confidential information. If malware has access to all of this crucial information, this could be detrimental to the company’s production. Segmentation allows data to be divided into several different levels of importance. On the more ‘outer’ segments of the network, the information does not necessarily pose any significant value compared to the information in the more sensitive core compartments.

Time-efficient

Being able to organize data efficiently into segments means that it will be easier for audits to take place. Not only will it help consolidate information more quickly and coherently, but for a company that relies on its networks, this can help boost productivity.

To make the long story short: yes, network compartmentalization does guarantee the safety of your information. However, business owners need to be aware that implementing this type of system into your networks can be a time-consuming and expensive process.

Setting up a network can already be a complicated process, but making sure that a network is segmented is another process in itself. However, the amount of hard work dedicated to implementing this type of network will pay off in the long run. Not only will you have a secure system, but optimizing your network can optimize productivity.

There are different reasons why you should segment your system. Not only will it be a good way of protecting your system, but it guarantees that your business’s processes can run even more smoothly. Although implementing this type of system might be a delicate and time-consuming process, it’s a better choice than losing millions’ worth of data and information.