Key takeaways
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Postperimeter exposure requires proactive containment.
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Sophisticated ransomware outpaces perimeter defenses and quickly targets critical workloads, so organizations must enforce microsegmentation to isolate compromised assets and prevent catastrophic operational downtime.
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Network visibility is required for effective threat isolation.
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Obscure internal traffic hides lateral threat movement, but comprehensive east-west mapping establishes operational context so security teams can safely enforce least-privilege policies.
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Inflexible legacy controls degrade clinical continuity.
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Static firewalls require complex network reconfigurations that risk downtime, whereas workload-level enforcement decouples policies from infrastructure to protect patient systems without operational disruption.
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Selective segmentation leaves critical assets vulnerable.
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Partial network perimeter coverage allows automated threats to traverse unsegmented paths, making full microsegmentation essential to contain attack vectors before patient data or critical care systems are impacted.
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Increasing regulatory expectations demand enforceable control.
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Evolving mandates like the updated HIPAA Security Rule require proof of reduced lateral risk, which continuous validation and granular segmentation provide through defensible, real-time evidence.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Breaches in healthcare take an average of 279 days to fully identify and contain, which is over a month longer than the typical breach in other sectors.
The average healthcare ransom payout reached US$860,000 in Q1 2025.
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation enforces policies directly at the workload level independently of the underlying infrastructure, allowing policies to be created or updated without complex network changes or downtime.
While 90% of organizations have adopted some form of segmentation, only 35% have implemented microsegmentation across their network environment.
Enterprises using microsegmentation contain ransomware attacks almost 22% faster on average, while organizations with over US$1 billion in revenue contain them almost 33% faster.
The 2025 HIPAA Security Rule updates strengthen requirements for network segmentation to protect ePHI, shifting segmentation from an “addressable” safeguard to an explicit technical expectation to limit lateral movement and contain threats.
GenAI and agentic AI tools enable attackers to accelerate reconnaissance and lateral movement, while internal “shadow AI” and agentic workloads generate dynamic, east-west traffic that traditional static tools cannot easily map or secure.