Illumio, Inc.

Roy Nobuo Nakashima

Paul James Kirner

Mukesh Gupta

Matthew Kirby Glenn

Thukalan V Verghese

Juraj George Fandli

Ronald Isaacson

Russell Stuart Goodwin

Yair Harel

Nathanael John Iversen

A policy management server manages a segmentation policy and policy constraints. The segmentation policy comprises a set of segmentation rules that each permit connections between specified groups of workloads that provide or consume network-based services. The policy constraints comprise a set of constraint rules that determine compliance of the segmentation rules. A workflow process may be initiated to resolve non-compliant rules by enabling an administrator to approve or deny the rule. In a large enterprise managing significant numbers of workloads, the policy constraints may be employed to ensure that overly permissive segmentation rules are not being created. This facilitates creation of a robust and narrowly tailored segmentation policy that reduces exposure of the enterprise to network-based security threats.

Constraint rules for constraining creation of a segmentation policy

A policy management server enables selective enforcement of a segmentation policy. The policy management server manages a segmentation policy that specifies a set of segmentation rules specifying permitted communications between workloads. The policy management server separately manages an enforcement policy that controls whether or not the segmentation policy is enforced for different services provided by the workloads. For services that are enforced, the policy management server distributes instructions to distributed enforcement modules that configure traffic filters to block traffic pertaining to enforced services that does not meet the segmentation rules. For non-enforced services, the policy management server obtains traffic data from the distributed enforcement modules without enforcing the segmentation policy to enable an administrator to build and/or test the segmentation policy.

Selective enforcement of a segmentation policy

An access control rule authorizing communication between a plurality of managed servers within an administrative domain is determined. Communication information describing past communication between the plurality of managed servers is obtained. A subset of managed servers from the plurality of managed servers is identified by grouping the plurality of managed servers based on the obtained communication information. A group-level label set is determined to associate with the subset of managed servers. Role labels are determined for managed servers in the subset of managed servers. A managed server is associated with one role label. Based on the group-level label set and the role labels, an access control rule is generated authorizing communication between a first managed server of the subset of managed servers and a second managed server. The access control rule is stored as part of an administrative domain-wide management policy.

Automated generation of access control rules for use in a distributed network management system that uses a label-based policy model

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Santa Cruz, CA, United States of America

Roy Nobuo Nakashima