Most microsegmentation initiatives fail earlier than they even get off the bottom—too advanced, too gradual, too disruptive. However Andelyn Biosciences proved it does not need to be that method.
Microsegmentation: The Lacking Piece in Zero Belief Safety
Safety groups as we speak are beneath fixed stress to defend in opposition to more and more refined cyber threats. Perimeter-based defenses alone can not present ample safety as attackers shift their focus to lateral motion inside enterprise networks. With over 70% of profitable breaches involving attackers transferring laterally, organizations are rethinking how they safe inside site visitors.
Microsegmentation has emerged as a key technique in reaching Zero Belief security by proscribing entry to crucial property primarily based on id slightly than community location. Nonetheless, conventional microsegmentation approaches—typically involving VLAN reconfigurations, agent deployments, or advanced firewall guidelines—are typically gradual, operationally disruptive, and tough to scale.
For Andelyn Biosciences, a contract growth and manufacturing group (CDMO) specializing in gene therapies, securing its pharmaceutical analysis and manufacturing environments was a prime precedence. However with hundreds of IT, IoT, and OT gadgets working throughout interconnected networks, a traditional segmentation method would have launched unacceptable complexity and downtime.
Initially, Andelyn chosen a community entry management (NAC) answer to deal with these challenges. Nonetheless, after virtually two years into an implementation with excessive operational overhead and an incapability to successfully scale segmentation, the security workforce grew to become annoyed with the shortage of progress. The complexity of agent-based enforcement and handbook coverage administration made it tough to adapt the answer to Andelyn’s quickly evolving atmosphere.
In the end, they determined to pivot to Elisity’s identity-based microsegmentation answer, enabling them to quickly implement least-privilege entry insurance policies with out requiring {hardware} modifications or community redesign.
Watch the Digital Case Research Replay
Hear from Bryan Holmes, VP of Info Expertise at Andelyn Biosciences, and Pete Doolittle, Chief Buyer Officer, Elisity to find how a contemporary method to microsegmentation accelerates Zero Belief adoption from years to weeks.
Bryan shares their journey from preliminary deployment to managing 2,700 lively security insurance policies—all with out disrupting operations or requiring new {hardware} or community configurations.
Watch Now to Be taught:
- Sensible methods for implementing microsegmentation throughout IT and OT environments with out disrupting crucial pharmaceutical manufacturing and analysis operations.
- speed up Zero Belief initiatives by leveraging identity-based security insurance policies that shield mental property, guarantee regulatory compliance, and safe medical trial information.
- get real-world insights on scaling from preliminary proof-of-concept to enterprise-wide deployment utilizing automated discovery, the Elisity IdentityGraph™, and dynamic coverage enforcement.
Watch the Full Case Research Right here
The Problem: Securing a Complicated, Excessive-Stakes Surroundings
The pharmaceutical business faces distinctive security challenges. Analysis and manufacturing services home crucial mental property and should adjust to strict regulatory necessities, together with NIST 800-207 and IEC 62443. At Andelyn, security leaders had been more and more involved concerning the dangers posed by a flat community structure, the place customers, gadgets, and workloads shared the identical infrastructure.
Regardless of conventional perimeter defenses, this construction left Andelyn susceptible to unauthorized entry and lateral motion. The security workforce confronted a number of key challenges:
- Lack of full visibility into all related gadgets, together with unmanaged IoT and OT property.
- The necessity for segmentation with out disrupting operations in extremely delicate analysis environments.
- Compliance pressures requiring fine-grained entry controls with out growing administrative overhead.
Bryan Holmes, VP of IT at Andelyn Biosciences, knew that conventional segmentation fashions would not work. Deploying community entry management (NAC) options or rearchitecting VLANs would have required vital downtime, impacting crucial analysis and manufacturing timelines.
“We wanted a microsegmentation answer that might present fast visibility, implement granular security insurance policies, and accomplish that with out requiring an enormous community overhaul,” Holmes defined.
The Elisity Method: Identification-Based mostly Segmentation With out Complexity
Not like legacy segmentation options, Elisity’s method doesn’t depend on VLANs, firewall guidelines, or agent-based enforcement. As an alternative, it applies identity-based security insurance policies dynamically, utilizing the prevailing community switching infrastructure to implement least-privilege entry.
On the core of Elisity’s platform is the Elisity IdentityGraph™, which correlates metadata from Energetic Listing, endpoint detection and response (EDR) options like CrowdStrike, and CMDB techniques to create a real-time map of customers, workloads, and gadgets. This visibility permits organizations to implement insurance policies primarily based on id, conduct, and threat—slightly than static community constructs.
For Andelyn, this meant they may obtain full community visibility and implement segmentation in weeks slightly than months or years, with out operational disruption.
Deployment: From Visibility to Coverage Enforcement in Weeks
Andelyn’s segmentation journey started with complete community discovery. Elisity’s platform passively recognized all customers, workloads, and gadgets throughout IT and OT environments, together with beforehand unmanaged property. Inside days, security groups had a whole stock, enriched with metadata to find out which property had been trusted, unknown, or probably rogue.
Subsequent, Andelyn moved to coverage modeling and simulation, utilizing Elisity’s “no-fear” dynamic coverage creation engine. As an alternative of implementing insurance policies instantly, security groups simulated segmentation guidelines to make sure they’d not disrupt crucial workflows.
As soon as validated, insurance policies had been steadily activated—first in lower-risk environments and later throughout manufacturing techniques. As a result of Elisity’s platform doesn’t require reconfiguring community infrastructure, enforcement was seamless.
“We had been capable of transfer from monitoring mode to full coverage activation in a fraction of the time we anticipated,” Holmes famous. “And we did it with out disrupting analysis or manufacturing operations.”
The Outcomes: Stronger Safety With out Added Complexity
With 2,700 lively security insurance policies now in place, Andelyn has considerably improved its Zero Belief maturity whereas guaranteeing compliance with business rules.
By making use of identity-based microsegmentation, the corporate has:
- Prevented unauthorized lateral motion, decreasing the potential blast radius of a breach.
- Protected pharmaceutical analysis information and mental property from insider threats and exterior assaults.
- Decreased operational overhead, as segmentation insurance policies are dynamically enforced with out the necessity for fixed handbook updates.
- Streamlined compliance reporting, aligning with NIST 800-207 and IEC 62443.
Not like conventional approaches that depend on static entry lists or require devoted segmentation {hardware}, Elisity’s platform constantly adapts as customers, workloads, and gadgets transfer throughout the community. Insurance policies are cloud-managed and dynamically up to date primarily based on real-time insights from the Elisity IdentityGraph™, guaranteeing security stays efficient at the same time as threats evolve.
The Future: Scaling Microsegmentation Throughout the Enterprise
Following the success of its preliminary deployment, Andelyn is now increasing microsegmentation insurance policies to further websites and use circumstances. The power to implement least-privilege entry dynamically, with out requiring main community modifications, has made Elisity a necessary a part of the corporate’s security technique.
For different organizations dealing with comparable challenges, Holmes gives a transparent advice:
“Begin with visibility. You may’t shield what you do not see. From there, deal with modeling insurance policies earlier than enforcement. The power to simulate insurance policies first was a game-changer for us.”
Microsegmentation is commonly seen as a posh, multi-year initiative that requires vital funding and operational disruption. Andelyn Biosciences’ case proves in any other case—with the best method, organizations can obtain Zero Belief segmentation in weeks, not years.
In case your segmentation challenge has stalled—or worse, by no means actually began—there’s a greater method. See how identity-based microsegmentation can speed up Zero Belief in your group. [Request a Demo Here]
