Why are network and security teams still relying on legacy firewalls to do internal network segmentation? As policy-protected applications and segments proliferate, physical firewall appliances are proving to be too complex, inflexible, and just plain ineffective to meet the security challenges of today’s increasingly dynamic hybrid cloud environments. And they’re far more expensive than teams may realize. Putting aside the huge upfront cost of firewalls and hardware, there are many significant downstream costs due to project management, labor, maintenance, and the very real risk of prolonged asset exposure due to lengthy implementation times. If modern enterprises are to reap the benefits of agile DevOps, rapid application deployment, and the cloud, there has to be a better way to secure critical assets with segmentation. Now there is: software-based segmentation. It’s easier, faster, more effective, and — as this paper will clearly demonstrate — it delivers optimal security at a far lower total cost of ownership than traditional segmentation methods.
