Illumio Core

Illumio Core is the market-leading Zero Trust microsegmentation platform engineered to stop the lateral spread of cyber threats, ransomware, and unauthorized intrusions across data centers, virtualized infrastructure, and multi-cloud environments. Traditional perimeter firewalls cannot prevent attackers who breach an enterprise perimeter from moving freely between internal servers and high-value databases. Illumio Core eliminates this risk by decoupling segmentation policy from network hardware infrastructure and enforcing granular Zero Trust controls directly at the workload operating system layer. The platform utilizes lightweight Virtual Enforcement Nodes (VENs) installed on hosts to capture network connection telemetry and transmit it to the Policy Compute Engine (PCE). The PCE automatically builds a comprehensive, real-time application dependency map—the Illumination map—visualizing all active communications across the enterprise. Security architects can easily design, test, and model microsegmentation policies in test mode without impacting active business operations. Once validated, Illumio Core programs the native stateful firewalls of host operating systems (such as Linux iptables/nftables and Windows Filtering Platform) to enforce least-privilege communication rules. By isolating critical applications and containing lateral compromise instantly, Illumio Core provides unparalleled cyber resilience and simplifies compliance with PCI DSS and SWIFT CSP.