Akamai Guardicore Segmentation
Eliminate risk in your network with industry‑leading microsegmentation that stops lateral movement, speeds breach containment, and advances your Zero Trust strategy — without costly hardware or downtime.
Request a demo to see policies, maps, and enforcement in action. Prefer to start hands‑on? Start a free trial.
Why enterprises choose Guardicore for breach containment
- Granular controls that block lateral movement
- Segment down to process and service level; apply least‑privilege policies that contain ransomware and prevent re‑infection during recovery.
- Rapid time to value
- Visualize east‑west traffic in minutes, then enforce with prebuilt templates and intuitive workflows.
- Works everywhere you run
- Broad coverage across legacy systems and modern cloud/K8s, with agent‑based and agentless options for IT, IoT, and OT.
- Independent of network topology
- Software overlay decouples enforcement from underlying infrastructure, so security is consistent across data center, cloud, and remote sites.
Read the product brief for a concise overview.
How it works
- Map
- Sensors, collectors, and logs map applications, users, and flows into a single, interactive view for real‑time and historical analysis.
- Create
- Build policies with guided templates and AI‑assisted suggestions. Flexible labeling integrates with orchestration tools and CMDBs.
- Visualize
- Drill into user‑ and process‑level activity to investigate anomalies, validate containment, and streamline forensics.
- Enforce
- Decoupled, software‑based enforcement simplifies creation, testing, and rollout — no network redesign required.
Watch a guided walkthrough of segmentation mapping, policy creation, and enforcement in the Guardicore console. Schedule a live demo.
What powers detection and faster response
Akamai security products are informed by continuously updated threat research and telemetry:
- Global threat intelligence
- Detection is enriched by Akamai’s global sensors, including more than 7 trillion daily DNS requests across the Akamai DNS cloud, providing broad visibility into emerging attacker infrastructure and techniques. See the overview in What Is Threat Detection?
- Embedded detections in Segmentation
- Reputation analysis flags suspicious domains, IPs, and file hashes in observed flows.
- Policy‑based detection surfaces unauthorized communications and noncompliant traffic at the network and process layers.
- Dynamic deception uses redirection architectures to safely engage adversaries and learn TTPs without impacting performance.
- Proactive threat hunting
- Akamai Hunt leverages Guardicore telemetry plus Akamai’s research to find evasive threats, reduce dwell time, and accelerate mitigation.
- Managed response (optional)
- Akamai Managed Security Service provides proactive monitoring, rapid incident response, and periodic tuning to strengthen posture as threats evolve.
Product features
- Microsegmentation to the process/service level
- Real‑time and historical east‑west visibility for faster investigations
- Broad platform coverage across legacy and modern stacks
- AI‑assisted, template‑driven policy creation
- Flexible asset labeling; CMDB/orchestration integrations
- Threat intelligence and breach detection to cut response time
- Osquery‑powered insights to highlight risky platforms and devices
- Agent‑based and agentless enforcement, including IoT/OT
Explore current adoption trends and business impact in the Segmentation Impact Study 2025. For ransomware guidance, see Building Resilience Amid a Volatile Threat Landscape.
Use cases
- Ransomware containment and recovery
- Instantly visualize affected assets and communications, apply controls in clicks to limit blast radius, and block inbound connections during recovery to prevent re‑infection.
- Cloud and container segmentation
- Apply one map and one policy engine across Azure, AWS, GCP, VMs, servers, and K8s. Use native enforcement where appropriate and adapt policies automatically to cloud changes. See the Kubernetes solution brief.
- Compliance acceleration
- Identify in‑scope assets, segment them from the rest of IT, and validate controls with real‑time and historical views to simplify audits.
- Critical application ringfencing
- Map dependencies, restrict communications tightly, and detect targeted attacks on crown‑jewel applications.
- Zero Trust for connected devices
- Discover and fingerprint IoT/OT, visualize device communications alongside IT, and apply agentless Zero Trust segmentation at scale.
Proof points from large enterprises
- Healthcare system (6,000+ assets)
- Ringfenced critical applications and restricted device access to the data center with no downtime or network changes. Visibility now simplifies auditor reviews; the data center is managed securely by a team of two. Read the case study.
- Global manufacturing company
- Deployed to ~2,000 workstations; gained “1,000% better” visibility including PC‑to‑PC flows. Akamai Hunt detected GoldenSpy‑like malware; Guardicore policies quarantined the host, halting lateral spread. Read the case study.
- State university (24 campuses, 600+ buildings)
- Centralized and secured building automation systems, created application‑level policies in minutes, and reduced reliance on complex firewall rule management. Read the case study.
Deployment and interoperability
- Cloud or on‑premises management options
- Works alongside existing firewalls; many customers phase out most internal firewalls as confidence grows
- Agent‑based for maximum visibility and control; agentless for in‑cloud PaaS, IoT, and OT
- Fast policy design, test, and deploy with no network redesign
Want to pressure‑test your environment? Use the free, open‑source Infection Monkey breach and attack simulation tool to continuously assess gaps and lateral movement resilience.
FAQ
- Is it available in the cloud?
- Yes. Guardicore Segmentation can be deployed in the cloud or on‑premises to fit your architecture.
- Will it work with my firewalls?
- Yes. You can run firewalls in parallel. Guardicore typically replaces most internal firewalling by providing more granular, flexible controls.
- Is it agent‑based?
- Both. Agents are recommended for deepest visibility and control; agentless options cover in‑cloud PaaS, IoT, and OT.
- How hard is policy creation?
- Fast and guided. AI suggestions, templates, and workflows speed design and customizations aligned to your business.
- Is it part of a Zero Trust approach?
- Yes. Microsegmentation is a core Zero Trust control for private networks, and Guardicore enforces it across hybrid environments.
- How does it work with Akamai Hunt?
- Akamai Hunt uses Guardicore telemetry and Akamai research to proactively find threats, virtually patch exposures, and harden the environment.
Next steps