Video: 10 minute IT Jams - An update from Illumio

Ransomware attacks are on the rise. As cybercriminals grow more sophisticated, businesses increasingly turn to new strategies and technologies to shore up digital defences and protect critical data. Among the frontrunners in this race is Illumio, a company that specialises in zero trust segmentation, led in the Asia-Pacific region by Vice President of Sales, David Sheppard.

Speaking recently on the 10 Minute IT Gems podcast, Sheppard outlined Illumio's approach and the innovations helping organisations in the APAC region meet modern security challenges.

"We're 100% focused on zero trust segmentation," Sheppard said, explaining that Illumio has been pursuing this mission for more than a decade. "We're helping customers prevent damage after a compromise or after a breach occurs, whether this is at the end point, in the data center, or in the cloud," he said.

Zero trust is a security philosophy where no user or application is trusted by default, whether inside or outside the network perimeter. The aim is to minimise the pathways available for attackers to move laterally through systems. Sheppard described how Illumio's products work to "control lateral movement pathways or traffic flows that's possible between them - and that's really what network segmentation is all about".

Cybercrime's rapid evolution has driven many organisations to look beyond traditional firewalls and the complexity they introduce. "More and more organisations recognise the need for what we do," Sheppard said, adding: "They know that firewalls and all the complexity and cost that comes with those - it's just not the right answer anymore."

As threats multiply, Illumio's approach is to listen closely to its user base. "Our customers actually play a pretty heavy hand in guiding product innovation. Their feedback is what drives our priorities," Sheppard said. In practice, this means adapting solutions as infrastructure changes. For example, Sheppard said, "we've extended coverage to the endpoint where lateral movement risk is clearly considerable, but also the public cloud," reflecting the shift toward mobile, cloud, and hybrid IT environments.

The company has also adjusted its pricing structure to make its products more accessible and tailored to customers' needs. "We made changes to our licensing as well to align with how customers actually want to deploy and use the product," Sheppard said. He described a new entry-level solution that allows organisations to access essential features such as core visibility and basic controls, like "blocking risky ports that are commonly used by ransomware actors to propagate", without extra charges for advanced features unless the customer engages them.

Illumio's product development roadmap is laser-focused on two main trends: actionable insight and usability. First, Sheppard highlighted the importance of "dashboards and reports" that make network behaviours visible and provide clear evidence of risk reduction. "We want to help IT and cyber teams in our customers demonstrate the impact that our tools are having on their environment and how we're helping them with their cyber risk," he said.

A key challenge for many customers, especially those outside the large enterprise segment, is limited resources. Illumio is responding by simplifying onboarding and automation. "How do we help them to quickly deploy the solution, realise some quick wins for their business, then we can learn the characteristics and behaviours of their network and make suggestions around policy?" Sheppard explained. Illumio is "moving more to a wizard-style 'suggest policy, click, click, done' and then they've introduced more enforcement into their network," he added.

The infrastructure to support this vision is already well established in the region. "We're essentially a field operation here in APAC," Sheppard said. "We've been in existence here for around five years. We've got sales, pre-sales, marketing, services, customer success support people located around the region, with teams in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. [We've] also got resources in India now." While maintaining offices in major cities, much of Illumio's go-to-market strategy relies on a network of partners. "Our go to market model is 100% indirect, so we're really relying on key partners to help us with coverage and scale beyond where we have our own teams," he said.

Asked how enterprise users can begin working with Illumio, Sheppard outlined several routes, placing emphasis on accessibility. "The most obvious way is via our website. Second, speak to your preferred SI or partner, ask them to reach out to us... and thirdly, you can email me," he said.

As ransomware and data breaches remain an ever-present risk, Illumio bets that organisations will need to continually adapt, not only with advanced technology but also with platforms that are easy to deploy and use. For Illumio, the goal is clear: to help customers thrive with confidence in a hostile digital landscape. "We want all organisations to be assured that their digital infrastructure and assets are safe," Sheppard said.