Agentic AI is fundamentally changing the scale, speed, and sophistication of cyberattacks—increasing lateral movement, exposing the limits of fragmented, asset-centric security, and accelerating the asymmetry of cyber warfare. In response, Illumio is changing how breach containment works, shifting from protecting workloads in isolation to a system-wide approach that continuously reveals how attacks move end-to-end and where and how they must be stopped.
Illumio is delivering new enhancements to Illumio Insights that fundamentally expand how lateral movement risk is exposed and mitigated, anchored by the introduction of Network Posture. By further enriching its AI security graph, Illumio now delivers system-wide, real-time visibility across hybrid, multi-cloud, and OT environments, surfacing end-to-end attack paths and showing where risk must be prioritized and mitigated. In an era where AI agents traverse enterprise infrastructure autonomously and at machine speed, the ability to see and control lateral movement has become existential.
Network Posture analyzes live network traffic, policy intent, and enforcement alignment against industry security frameworks to identify where lateral movement risk exists — including exposures that may not yet be actively exploited. By correlating these findings with application and business context, teams can prioritize breach containment and segmentation decisions based on real, system-level risk rather than static assets or point-in-time assessments. Network Posture also provides continuous measurement of security posture across hybrid environments, supporting clear reporting on maturity and alignment with frameworks such as NIST CSF, PCI DSS, SOC 2, and DORA based on how the network is behaving.
“Most security failures happen because teams don’t understand how things are connected,” said John Kindervag, Chief Evangelist at Illumio. “Attackers exploit relationships, not individual assets. If you can’t see how traffic flows throughout your environment, you can’t see the attack and contain the breach. We’re approaching an ‘AI event horizon’ in cyber, where the attacker advantage becomes nonlinear, and defenders can’t keep up by chasing alerts alone. When prevention and detection fall short, the last line of defense remains breach containment.”
“Organizations still treat Zero Trust like a shopping list — buy more stuff, feel better, hope it works,” said Dr. Chase Cunningham (DrZeroTrust). “Agentic AI is going to punish that mindset. The only measures that matter are outcomes: how often you get hit, how far the attacker can move, and how fast you can contain. That requires understanding how systems connect and how risk propagates because you can’t defend what you don’t understand, and you can’t contain what you can’t see.”