International Journal of Science, Engineering and TechnologyAuthors: Nayantara Sahgal
Abstract: Micro-segmentation has emerged as a pivotal strategy in securing cloud workloads in modern enterprise environments. As cloud adoption accelerates, traditional perimeter-based security models are proving inadequate against increasingly sophisticated threats that target lateral movement within data centers. Micro-segmentation enables fine-grained policies that isolate workloads and control traffic based on identity, context, and application-level logic. This minimizes the attack surface and significantly reduces the risk of breaches propagating across systems. By using software-defined networking (SDN) and policy-driven automation, organizations can dynamically segment workloads without physical network changes, thus ensuring operational efficiency. This paper explores the conceptual framework of micro-segmentation, its technical implementation in multi-cloud and hybrid environments, and its synergy with identity and access management (IAM), zero trust principles, and DevSecOps practices. We also discuss challenges such as policy sprawl, visibility constraints, and compliance mapping, while presenting use cases that illustrate real-world benefits. The increasing complexity and dynamism of cloud-native applications make micro-segmentation not just an enhancement, but a necessity in cloud workload security strategies.
DOI: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16750875
