Illumio Named Among Notable Vendors in The Forrester Zero Trust Platforms Landscape, Q2 2023 Overview

Can you prove the return on your security investments?  

Today’s volatile risk landscape requires security solutions that can stop inevitable breaches from becoming disasters. And economic uncertainty makes reliable, provable return on security investment (ROI) more important than ever. This means many organizations are looking for solutions that can achieve essential Zero Trust functionalities – fast and at scale.

Forrester’s new Zero Trust Platforms Landscape, Q2 2023 overview reiterates the importance of platforms that make working toward Zero Trust easier and faster: “Zero Trust platforms consolidate tools to help organizations enhance user experience, simplify deployments, centralize management, and enable outcomes.”

Illumio was recognized by Forrester in the new Zero Trust Platforms Landscape, Q2 2023 overview among the notable Zero Trust platform vendors. We believe Illumio aligns with all the core use cases organizations need in a Zero Trust vendor based on Forrester’s overview, offering organizations the quick security ROI they need.

Read Forrester’s overview here.

Zero Trust platforms: Sharing security context, risk, and responsibility

Zero Trust isn’t just about changing the way security teams make decisions – it’s also about sharing security context, risk visibility, and responsibility among the entire organization.  

“S&R [security and risk] pros continue to navigate the strenuous process of securing systems, networks, or infrastructure. The new norm of hybrid everything (workforce, workloads, and workplaces) further complicates things with continued cloud services adoption, expansion of BYO policies, deparameterization of information systems, and the work-from-anywhere model,” explains Forrester.

Every component of the security stack should have the same view of the environment if today’s complex security strategies are to be effective. When modern Zero Trust platforms like Illumio are implemented, multiple areas of the organization maintain the same view of the environment by sharing the same source of truth, including the sources of metadata and context. This allows teams to build Zero Trust security policy that works together rather than in silos. In turn, organizations are able to achieve tighter security across the entire organization and make real strides toward Zero Trust’s “never trust, always verify” model.

According to Forrester’s overview, “Zero Trust platforms go beyond simply checking a box to satisfy one or more of the seven pillars/domains. They must also embody Zero Trust core principles and functionalities necessary to address multiple use cases and aid in the cultural and process changes Zero Trust adoption requires.”

Reliable, provable ROI from your Zero Trust platform

By using a purpose-built Zero Trust platform like Illumio, organizations increase cyber resilience by implementing Zero Trust strategies while facilitating the consolidation of their security stack. This can mean significant cost savings: Zero Trust strategies get integrated across the organization quickly, security investments get better ROI, and security initiatives are more likely to be successful the first time.

The 2023 commissioned Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) of Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation study shows the ROI and cost-saving benefits of building a Zero Trust architecture with Illumio/

Download a copy of the study here.

A composite organization based on interviewed customers that implemented Illumio saw a 111 percent ROI over three years with payback within just 6 months. This results in a net present value (NPV) of $5.4 million.

In addition, the Forrester study found the following benefits:

• 66 percent reduction in the blast radius or impact of a breach
• $3.8 million in savings by limiting downtime and a 90 percent reduction in unplanned outages
• 90 percent decrease in operational effort by InfoSec teams to implement and manage segmentation
• $3 million savings from tool consolidation and reduced firewall costs

One of the main reasons organizations see quick success from their Illumio implementation results from the help Illumio provides to build the right engagement across stakeholders, helping every team get aligned on security initiatives and approach.

Top Zero Trust use cases

In addition to offering reliable security ROI, we believe Illumio delivers on all 10 use cases outlined by Forrester in their overview. The below five core use cases have been identified by Forrester as the most frequently sought after by customers when searching for Zero Trust platforms. We have outlined how we believe we deliver on each of them.

• ‍Enable and protect hybrid (anywhere) workforce: Illumio Endpoint segments every endpoint no matter where they’re located, ensuring breaches don’t spread to the rest of the network. Illumio Endpoint can seamlessly integrate with existing endpoint security tools like endpoint detection and response (EDR). ‍
• Monitor and secure network traffic across enterprise: Illumio’s application dependency mapping allows organizations to gain visibility into traffic across all workloads, including containers, IoT, and virtual machines, in a single console. This allows security teams to pinpoint network risks and block unnecessary connections between ports. ‍
• Prevent lateral movement of unauthorized activity: Microsegmentation, also called Zero Trust Segmentation (ZTS), isolates applications and assets and prevents breaches from spreading through the network. Illumio applies ZTS to applications, containers, clouds, data centers, and endpoints.
• Enforce least privilege on all entities: Illumio ZTS helps you identify application dependencies and vulnerabilities so you can build flexible, adaptable security policy that allows only trusted traffic, blocking all other traffic. ‍
• Centrally manage key security controls: Illumio delivers one comprehensive segmentation solution for all on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments, enabling visibility at scale.  

We also believe that Illumio delivers on all five of the extended use cases outlined by Forrester in the overview:

• Illumio offers a robust third-party partnership ecosystem to allow easy, flexible integrations with other security tools and platforms.
• Illumio helps organizations visualize and gain insights into systems and their vulnerabilities that inform new security policy across network, security, and DevOps teams. This can all be done without disrupting business-critical applications.
• With Illumio, teams can specify security policy without relying on IP addresses, ensuring that policy is flexible and adaptable to network changes.
• Illumio’s application dependency map automates the process of tracking application stacks and can adapt over time as new servers, ports, network devices, and data sources change.
• Illumio ZTS can scale with your organization as it grows and changes over time. Illumio scales up to 200,000 managed workloads or over 700,000 unmanaged workloads in a single deployment, providing extensive protection against ransomware and breaches.

Want to learn more about Illumio ZTS? Contact us today for a free consultation and demo.