EMA Survey Highlights Microsegmentation Future

Zero Networks, a pioneer in zero trust security, is the ideal solution to support organizations seeking to follow CISA’s new zero trust microsegmentation guidance.

While microsegmentation has long been considered complex and niche, a new survey from Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) signals a turning point in attitudes around microsegmentation: 96% of respondents consider microsegmentation to be extremely or very important for cyber defense.

EMA survey results

EMA’s research uncovers industry sentiment around the greatest benefits of microsegmentation 

The EMA survey results, detailed below, arrived just weeks prior to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issuing official guidance on microsegmentation to advance zero trust architecture.

CISA’s directive reinforces the urgency for enterprises and government organizations to adopt microsegmentation as a cornerstone of modern cyber defense to block lateral movement and contain threats like ransomware.

Similarly, EMA’s research uncovers industry sentiment around the greatest benefits of microsegmentation and key capabilities that will continue to differentiate pioneer solutions from legacy approaches.

Maturing microsegmentation market

EMA surveyed 145 IT professionals, information security practitioners, and technology business leaders across all verticals to gain insight into their perspectives around microsegmentation solutions. Key findings include:

• Crucially, 33.1% of respondents cite the ability to instantly quarantine and contain threats as the most valuable benefit — a sign that organizations are shifting focus toward rapid incident response and limiting the blast radius of attacks. 
• Halting lateral movement and thwarting ransomware (20.7%), meeting compliance and cyber insurance requirements (14.5%), and ensuring operational continuity (11.7%) were also recognized.

Beyond containment, the research shows what enterprises expect next:

• 82.8% rate automated policy creation and lifecycle management as extremely or very important within the next 1–2 years.
• 47.6% view fast, automated asset discovery and tagging as critical to future differentiation.
• 50.3% consider integration with multi-factor authentication (MFA) for securing privileged access extremely important.

Crossing the threshold

“When we conducted this research, we wanted to know if microsegmentation had crossed the threshold from niche technology to critical enterprise strategy,” said Chris Steffen, Vice President of Research at EMA.

“The data is unequivocal: microsegmentation is now foundational. Organizations value its ability to instantly contain threats, and they are demanding automation and integration with identity and access management to future-proof their defenses.”

Deterministic automation engine

Zero Networks delivers microsegmentation that aligns directly with CISA’s call for broad adoption

Unlike legacy approaches that require agents, manual rule-writing, and multi-year projects, Zero Networks delivers microsegmentation that aligns directly with CISA’s call for broad adoption: automated, agentless, and implemented in days.

The company’s deterministic automation engine eliminates the complexity that has historically kept microsegmentation out of reach, creating and managing policies without error-prone guesswork.

With built-in dynamic asset discovery, identity segmentation, and network-layer MFA, Zero Networks makes it possible for organizations of any size to prevent lateral movement and contain ransomware – without adding operational burden.

Prioritizing prevention

“Enterprises aren’t just thinking about detection anymore – they are prioritizing prevention with immediate containment and resilience. With Zero Networks in place, networks defend themselves by design; nothing has to be found, mitigated or confined because if someone enters your network they simply cannot go any further or do any damage,” said Benny Lakunishok, CEO of Zero Networks.

“We greatly value the voice of CISA in this conversation, and we hope that combined with the EMA survey findings, organizations will start to gain confidence that microsegmentation is attainable not only by the most mature organizations.”