Illumio, Inc.

Cisco Technology, Inc.

Other

Daniel Richard Cook

Paul James Kirner

Mukesh Gupta

Jerry B Scott

Matthew Kirby Glenn

Juraj George Fandli

Andrew S Rubin

Anish Vinodkumar Desai

Thomas Michael McCormick

Thukalan V Verghese

Sehyo Chang

Alan B Stokol

Rupesh Kumar Mishra

Monica I Morogan

Christopher J White

Peter Denis Finch

Jaehong Park

Alan B Stokel

Theresa Rose Finch

A segmentation firewall executing on a host enforces a segmentation policy. In a co-existence mode, the segmentation firewall operates in co-existence with a system firewall that enforces a security policy. The segmentation firewall is configured to either drop packets that do not match any permissive rule or pass packets that match a permissive rule to the system firewall to enable the system firewall to determine whether to drop or accept the passed packets. To enable efficient operation of the segmentation firewall when operating in co-existence with the system firewall, the segmentation firewall may include a plurality of rule chains and may be configured to exit a chain and bypass remaining rule chains upon an input packet matching a permissive rule of the segmentation policy.

Enforcing a segmentation policy in co-existence with a system firewall

A managed server (MS) within an administrative domain is quarantined. The administrative domain includes multiple MSs that use management instructions to configure management modules so that the configured management modules implement an administrative domain-wide management policy that comprises a set of one or more rules. The quarantined MS is isolated from other MSs. A description of the MS is modified to indicate that the MS is quarantined, thereby specifying a description of the quarantined MS. Cached actor-sets are updated to indicate the quarantined MS's changed state, thereby specifying updated actor-sets. A determination is made regarding which updated actor-sets are relevant to an other MS, thereby specifying currently-relevant updated actor-sets. A determination is made regarding whether the currently-relevant updated actor-sets differ from actor-sets previously sent to the other MS. Responsive to determining that the currently-relevant updated actor-sets are identical to the previously-sent actor-sets, no further action is taken.

Distributed network security using a logical multi-dimensional label-based policy model

An enforcement module receives management instructions from a segmentation server for enforcing a segmentation policy. The management instructions include one or more rules specifying one or more groups of workloads that a workload executing on the operating system instance is permitted to communicate with according to certain communication constraints, and membership information specifying workload identifiers for workloads in each of the groups. An optimization module processes the management instructions to reduce the number of rules and the number of workload groups to which the rules apply, thereby simplifying the firewall configuration. The enforcement module then configures a firewall according to the optimized rules to enforce the segmentation policy. The optimization process beneficially improves performance of the firewall and thereby enables more efficient enforcement of the segmentation policy utilizing fewer computing resources.

Optimizing rules for configuring a firewall in a segmented computer network

An enforcement module receives a DNS-based rule of a segmentation policy that controls access of a managed workload to workloads in a DNS domain in which the IP addresses of the workloads associated with a domain name are resolved by a DNS server. When the managed workload makes a connection request to the workload associated with the domain name, the enforcement module snoops on a DNS response from the DNS server to learn the IP address of the workload associated with the domain name. If a domain name of the DNS domain is in a whitelist of domain names permitted by the DNS-based rule, the enforcement module adds the learned IP address to a whitelist of IP addresses and configures a firewall associated with the managed workload to permit connections to the IP addresses in the whitelist.

Domain name based visibility and policy enforcement in a segmented network environment

A change to a state of a particular managed server within an administrative domain is processed. The administrative domain includes a plurality of managed servers that use management instructions to configure management modules so that the configured management modules implement an administrative domain-wide management policy that comprises a set of one or more rules. A first description of the particular managed server is modified to indicate the particular managed server's changed state, thereby specifying a second description of the particular managed server. The unmodified first description is compared to the second description, thereby specifying a description change. A determination is made, based on the description change, regarding whether to update management instructions previously sent to the particular managed server.

Handling changes in a distributed network management system that uses a logical multi-dimensional label-based policy model

Management instructions for a particular managed server within an administrative domain are generated according to an administrative domain-wide management policy that comprises a set of one or more rules. The administrative domain includes a plurality of managed servers. A determination is made regarding which rules within the set of rules are relevant to the particular managed server. Function-level instructions are generated based on the rules that were determined to be relevant. A determination is made regarding which managed servers within the plurality of managed servers are relevant to the particular managed server. The function-level instructions and information regarding the managed servers that were determined to be relevant are sent to the particular managed server. The particular managed server uses the function-level instructions and information regarding the managed servers to configure a management module so that the configured management module implements the administrative domain-wide management policy.

Distributed network management using a logical multi-dimensional label-based policy model

An enforcement mechanism on an operating system instance enforces a segmentation policy on a container. A configuration generation module executing in a host namespace of the operating system instance receives management instructions from a segmentation server for enforcing the segmentation policy on a container. The configuration generation module executes in the host namespace to configure a traffic control and monitoring module in a container namespace associated with the container. The traffic control and monitoring module in the container namespace controls and monitors communications to and from the container in accordance with its configuration. By executing a configuration generation module in the host namespace to configure traffic control and monitoring module in the container namespace, the enforcement mechanism beneficially enables robust and lightweight enforcement in a manner that is agnostic to different containerization protocols.

Infrastructure-agnostic network-level visibility and policy enforcement for containers

A server is paired. A pairing request that includes a pairing key is received from an unpaired server. A determination is made regarding whether to approve or reject the pairing request. Making the determination comprises attempting to validate the pairing key in the pairing request. Responsive to determining to approve the pairing request: the unpaired server is notified that the unpaired server is now a managed server; a description of the managed server is generated, wherein the managed server description includes a set of one or more labels that describe the managed server; management instructions are generated for the managed server based on the managed server description and based on an administrative domain-wide management policy that includes a rule that refers to managed servers using a label; and the management instructions are sent to the managed server.

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Daniel Richard Cook