Podcasts about microsegmentation

HPE has announced new features in its Juniper Mist portfolio. On today’s sponsored Packet Protector, we dig into those features, including a dry run option that lets organizations test and refine Network Access Control (NAC) policies before pushing them out, a policy validation feature that can identify shadow NAC rules, and a microsegmentation capability aimed... Read more »

HPE has announced new features in its Juniper Mist portfolio. On today’s sponsored Packet Protector, we dig into those features, including a dry run option that lets organizations test and refine Network Access Control (NAC) policies before pushing them out, a policy validation feature that can identify shadow NAC rules, and a microsegmentation capability aimed... Read more »

Adam Hofeler, vice president of go-to-market strategy at Zero Networks Microsegmentation has been on a lot of security roadmaps, but for many MSPs the category has felt like it belongs to the enterprise world – complex to deploy, hard to explain to customers, and unclear as a services opportunity. Zero Networks is making a case that it doesn’t have to be that way, and it’s betting on the channel to prove it. In this episode, Adam Hofeler, vice president of go-to-market strategy at Zero Networks, joins us to talk about the company’s shift from roughly 20 per cent partner-led to a fully channel-first model, built around its updated Zero to Sixty partner program. Adam shares details on new tiering, deal registration protections, enablement resources, and a structural commitment to never compete with partners on deals. The numbers back up the momentum: Zero Networks reported 45 per cent year-over-year revenue growth through MSP partnerships and says it’s targeting a doubling of that figure this year. The company also earned the only five-star rating in the 2026 Gartner Peer Insights Voice of the Customer for microsegmentation, with a 100 per cent willingness-to-recommend score. For Canadian listeners, there’s a specific angle worth noting: Zero Networks currently has no Canada-based staff and is actively looking to build its presence in major Canadian markets through new partnerships. Adam discusses what that early-mover opportunity looks like and how interested partners can get started. We also dig into the growing role of microsegmentation in cyber insurance conversations, how Zero Networks’ identity segmentation capabilities address lateral movement risks in Active Directory-heavy environments, and what “containment as a recurring service” actually looks like for an MSP in practice. Read Full Transcript Robert Dutt: Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and as always your host for the show. Microsegmentation has been on a lot of security roadmaps for a while now, but for many MSPs and solution providers, it still felt like something that lives in the enterprise world. Complex to deploy, hard to explain to customers, not always clear where the recurring revenue opportunity is. Zero Networks is looking to change that, and they’re making a big bet on their channel to do it. The company recently went full channel first with an updated partner program called Zero to Sixty, reported 45% year-over-year revenue growth through MSP partners, and earned the only five-star rating in Gartner’s 2026 Peer Insights Voice of the Customer for microsegmentation. Joining me today to talk about all of this is Adam Hofeler, vice president of go-to-market strategy at Zero Networks. We’re going to dig into what the channel first shift really means in practice, where Canadian partners fit into Zero Networks’ plans, and why the conversation around containment and identity segmentation may be more relevant to your next customer meeting than you think. Adam, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. Adam Hofeler: Yeah, good to see you, Robert. Robert Dutt: Your team recently published research that analyzed three plus trillion activities across 400 enterprise environments, and the big finding was that most security risk comes from routine abuses of normal trusted access paths, and not from the zero-day exploits, the big attention getters. For MSPs and VARs that are listening, what does that actually mean about where the real risk is in customers’ environments right now? Adam Hofeler: Yeah, that’s a good question. I think when you look at it, we already know that most customers or end users, the bad guys are already in their organization in some form or fashion. They just don’t know it yet. So that if when you look at a security stack that might have detection and response capabilities and some other of those high valued propositions, because when we look at what we do, we’re one piece of the puzzle. But when you look at that, we know that exists. And we already, I think most people say, assume the breach is how fast you can kind of detect it. So when we look at what we do from a technology perspective, we help that blast radius, right? We help organizations prevent attacks, we minimize that blast radius, we maintain business continuity, even when attackers are already inside. So I tell our partners and MSPs to say, “Hey, look, we all agree that something is going to happen, but how do we control that? What does that look like?” And that’s really where Zero Networks comes in. Robert Dutt: And that’s, you know, you touch on sort of going from detect and respond to what I’ll call sort of contained by default as an approach there. How do you explain that shift to a partner who’s kind of built their practice around EDR, around a traditional SOC stack, that kind of thing? Adam Hofeler: Yeah. So our motion today is not like, “Hey, look, displace all these things that you’ve sold your customers today. That doesn’t make sense.” But most of our customers are being asked from a compliance standpoint or regulatory compliance standpoint to do, “Hey, I don’t love using the term, but the zero trust architecture or platform pieces of it, right? That’s a real thing.” And we’re one piece of that puzzle, although a very, very big piece. So when I talk to partners of like, “Hey, look, things that still matter to end users are protecting uptime, revenue, safety while meeting compliance requirements amid financial and operation cyber risks. It exists today.” And regulatory and compliance pieces are still coming down, even though they’ve sold multiple various technologies in cyber. So we’re really good at helping them solve that piece in parts. There are times where we talk about, “Hey, look, this is what an EDR does. This is what we do. This is why we work well together, and we’re not telling you not to have an EDR.” But we also look at it as if you look at all the breaches, and again, we’re not trying to scare anybody, but if you look at all the breaches, almost all of them had an EDR. They all had some kind of technology in that stack, but it didn’t prevent what had happened from a breaching perspective, and we really control that. Robert Dutt: Okay. On the partner program side of things, you’ve moved from, I think it was around 20% partner led to 100% channel first over the course of three years. To step back in time a little bit, what either broke or didn’t work about the old model that led you down that path? Adam Hofeler: Yeah. It was more of a people-type scenario when we started three years ago, we were a younger company, but didn’t have the people or process. We didn’t really have a programmatic approach, and we didn’t have relationships in the partner community. So I don’t view it as a fault of Zero Networks at all, but when I came in and the hiring that we’ve done with the team on the go-to-market side as well as our sales, we really just kind of dug our trenches in to say, “Hey, look, the partner community is where we want to be. They do a fantastic job. They’ve got great relationships. They’ve got technical resources. Let’s embrace it.” So it wasn’t that we were shying away from it. We were just a much, much smaller company. And so with the growth of the people that we brought on board, allowed us to say, “Okay, now we are ready to kind of really do this and focus and concentrate to making sure that the partners not only are happy, but focus on what will make them grow even further or faster with us.” Robert Dutt: A tale as old as time, I think, in the channel space, the sort of company starts to build up direct to some level, then realizes, “Okay, how do we multiply this?” And that’s when you bring in folks who understand the channel and start to build that out. Totally familiar. And that’s exactly it. Let’s talk about Zero to Sixty, the program update specifically. So if I’m a VAR or MSP that’s already working with you guys, what are the two or three changes that I’m going to feel most immediately in how I sell, how I deliver, and how I work with you? Adam Hofeler: You’ll get additional registration or partner protection, not only on the length of time, but the dollars in which you’re going to be protected. So there’s usually some money, financial pieces tied to it. So most individual partners like that. From a company perspective for those partners, we have set an alignment of marketing dollars affiliated with that. So there’s some good things that we can do based on marketing with our partners, having end user events or various things internally as well. Do we have that available to us? And the third thing is enablement, not only on the sales, but the technical side. So those partners that can really embrace our technology, learning it from a technical perspective, we’ll reap some benefits along those lines as well. Robert Dutt: Deal reg and pricing friction in general are perennial pain points or points of discussion in the industry. You’ve talked publicly about mandatory deal registration and no direct competition with partners. I guess the question is, as you scale that, how do you enforce that structurally and culturally? Adam Hofeler: Yeah. It’s a big thing for me and for our company. When we talk about it, in my time of doing something like this, partners really want a couple of things. They want trust. Trust not only from the company, but from the people that they do business with at the field level. They want to be profitable. They want to make money because there’s a lot of technologies that they don’t make as much money, but it’ll cost them just as much on their time, energy, and effort, the value of time. And they want to make sure the technology works. So they can go and sell something else and they can have happy customers. So there’s three things that play a part in that. So we’re really trying to solve those three things and make sure that it’s sustaining, not just for our first year of changing the Zero to Sixty model, but making it a long-lived solution for them that they had a good experience so they’ll keep coming back and back and tell their friends within the organization to say, “Great experience, treated us well, made some good money, and oh, by the way, I’ve got a happy customer.” Robert Dutt: You reported 45% year over year growth in MSP partnerships. Just to clarify there, is that growth in number of MSPs and revenue through MSPs both? What’s the point there? Adam Hofeler: Good question. Yeah, the 45% growth was in revenue from the MSPs, and we’re looking to actually double that this coming year in revenue. We are not looking to scale and grow to just be MSP-centric, but it is a big focus and attention for us. Our technology does lend itself to a great MSP practice. In this space, not a lot of MSPs have the chance and opportunity to leverage microsegmentation based on some other providers and their complexity of the way they can do it. For us, we’ve solved that issue, so we really want to get out in front of the MSP and MSP practice. For those companies that are interested from a partnering perspective, we’d love to talk to them and see where it goes. Making it profitable will have its own separate, unique process from a pricing perspective and procedure, let alone what the technology can do for their end users from a manageability perspective when they manage that. Robert Dutt: You’ve described the MSP opportunity as shifting from reactive incident response to a recurring resilience kind of position. Practically speaking, what does that service look like and what is the MSP actually delivering on an ongoing basis once the initial containment deployment is done? Adam Hofeler: Yeah, so we have the unique ability to produce a risk assessment report so an MSP can show their end users the value that this technology is bringing them from a security, from a compliance piece. Manageability is pretty light on the MSP piece. Our system has an automation approach to what we do and how we do it, so that it takes some hours away from our MSP to focus on maybe some other things while the technology really can help them deliver some of the other initiatives that they might have. While we continue to tag all the assets, which is a challenge in the microsegmentation world, as well as building rules and policies that the MSP would have to do, now our technology can take that burden off of them for the most part. So it’s really helping our MSPs hit a core, I guess, end user state for them, not leveraging maybe all the services that they might have had on another technology. So really a lot of big value added to an MSP and to end users. Robert Dutt: One angle that I think MSPs – MSPs anywhere – are interested in right now is cyber insurance. Insurers are increasingly requiring proof of segmentation and zero trust controls before issuing or renewing a policy. How are you seeing partners use that fact as sort of a door opener with customers who might not otherwise consider this a priority? Adam Hofeler: Yeah, great question. When we do see it, there are some times where cyber insurance comes and we’ve been able to reduce some of that cost for cyber insurance because they have our technology. So there’s a benefit for the end users, I don’t want to say quite immediately, but once they find out that they do have a zero trust or microsegmentation strategy, because at the end of the day, we reduce downtime and minimize serious incident costs. We lower incident severity and faster recovery, improve executive confidence from a governance posture perspective. So these are all things that cyber insurance agencies are looking at that we can accomplish with our technology. So one, I’m thankful that we have it, but two, we do see that question come up. I’ll say maybe 20% these days with that number probably only growing at an exorbitant amount based on the relevance of that cyber insurance question that you asked. Robert Dutt: Let’s zoom in on Canada a little bit. The press release announcing the Zero to Sixty developments mentions distribution partners in Europe, Australia, Japan, some major US-based enterprise partners. I didn’t see Canada specifically called out, but can you help me out with what the channel footprint actually looks like here in Canada today and especially where you need more help from Canadian partners, whether that’s geographically, whether that’s vertically, whether that’s whatever measure. Adam Hofeler: Yeah. If I say all over, would that be too much, Robert? When you’re a fast growing company, there’s different areas of focus that you have, right? And we don’t have anybody from a Zero Networks perspective based in Canada. So everything has been through the partners and the partner community. We’ve had interest there and we do have some partners today. It is a great market for us. And we are kind of diving in this year in 2026 more into the Canada market in the major markets. And my ask would be if there’s a partner that’s interested in a fast growing cybersecurity company unique in the market and industry, we’d love to talk to them. So that’s typically in the major markets, but we’re not excluding anyone that might have some great customers that are interested in the product or services that we offer. So the partners that we have today, there’s a few that are headquartered and based in Canada, but some of them are the national partners that cover all of North America that we have today. Robert Dutt: For Canadian partners who are evaluating the space, there are some established players – Illumio, Akamai Guardicore, those kinds of folks. You guys are combining network segmentation with identity segmentation, restricting admin and service account access, and not just network traffic. How do you explain that distinction to a partner who thinks, “All right, I’ve already got microsegmentation covered.” Adam Hofeler: Yeah, it’s not easy, by the way. I think sometimes we have a preconceived notion of, “Oh, I already have that already,” or, “I have this technology and they do that.” And we have to take a step back and say, “Well, they do parts of it and not completely.” So yeah, with our unique approach of having an identity-based access enforcement at the network layer with just-in-time access for administrative and lateral movement pathways, this allows us to kind of dive into deeper of what network segmentation is and identity segmentation is. By default, we close privileged ports or privileged access, and then only when the customer identifies themselves will we open to that. So I take the scenario as such of, “Hey, look, you have some of these other providers. That’s great.” There’s three superhero things that we do differently. One, we don’t have an agent, so you don’t have to worry about it from an agent approach and sending agents across the entire infrastructure. So right away, partners like that, “Oh, okay, now I don’t need an agent.” The second piece that’s one of our superpowers is we have an automation engine, and the automation engine tags all the assets and builds the rules and policies, which customers in the past have been a big, big challenge, and then I have that just-in-time MFA aspect of things. So I tell the partner that’s just learning about microsegmentation is you have a neighborhood, and if there’s bad guys who are trying to get into one of the houses, what do they look for? They look for an open garage or a window or a screen door, whatever the case might be. That doesn’t mean that the house doesn’t have some protection around it. It’s got a fence. It might have a dog. You might have a Ring camera. All of that helps. So what we do is we’re like, “Hey, look, if someone gets in because you left a screen door open or a window open, they walk into that room. They won’t be able to move, and if they want access to open the door, they’ll have to identify themselves with who they are.” So I try to put in some terms of those folks that may know what we do from a network and identity segmentation and kind of go a little bit deeper. Or if I’m just starting out from a partner and they’re looking for something in their portfolio, I use that house analogy because it usually lets them understand it just a little bit easier to say, “Hey, look, I’m in a neighborhood. Bad guys want to find the easiest way.” Once they find a way, we just prevent anything from happening anywhere else in the house. Robert Dutt: Identity segmentation feels particularly relevant, particularly in the sweet spot for MSPs that are in Active Directory heavy environments with lots of service accounts today. How quickly do you find partners can deploy that and start to show customers measurable risk reduction when they start with you? Adam Hofeler: In the identity aspect of things, within two weeks. Once we’re implemented, we’ll be able to gather most of the information that we need from a service or an admin accounts, which is a big challenge for most of these companies and organizations where they don’t know where anything is or where they sit or who might have access. Within two weeks, we’d be able to identify it. Now, it’d be easy for me to say right away or immediately, and that is the case. But for the identity piece of our platform, usually we say seven to 10 days. Robert Dutt: You guys earned a five-star rating in this year’s Gartner Peer Insights Voice of the Customer for the microsegmentation space. The only vendor to score a perfect 100 and 100% willingness to recommend, that’s a nice piece of business for you. What’s one piece of customer feedback from that process that surprised you or changed how you think about the product? Adam Hofeler: Man, I will go to my very first week of being at Zero Networks. I come meet our CEO, Benny, up in New York. I’m at a customer site. This is where I’m meeting him. I’m in the conference room, and the CIO says, “We love your product.” And I’m still new. I really don’t know exactly what we do, to be honest with you, Robert. I’m like, “Okay, I love hearing that. That’s good.” He absolutely gushed for five or 10 minutes about our product and who we are and what we do and how we’ve helped their organization. I’m like, “All right, this is great.” We go to a dinner that night, and there’s probably a room of 20 individuals, about 20% of the room is a customer of Zero Networks and the others are prospects. And they could not stop raving about our product. And I look to a colleague to the side of me, I’m like, “What’s happening here?” Really, where did I just go? Customers just sing our praises. And so that set the tone for me being here for almost three years of customers really love what we do. And it’s great that we have a technology that customers love it, but we’re actually solving a business challenge they have and they’ve had. And it became a reckoning to say, “Our technology really does it.” So we are growing very, very fast and it’s primarily because our customers are recommending us to other customers. They talk about their challenges that they might’ve had. They talked about how we solved it and how quickly we’ve had the ability to solve it. So to some degree, I thought I was in the Twilight Zone the very first day and it continues to grow and manifest itself as we continue to grow. And so when we talk about the five-star rating and how customers really sing our praises, it’s very much true. I haven’t had this in my sales career for quite some time that if I put a customer on the phone and I just hop off, I really feel that whoever they’re talking to is going to become a Zero Networks customer as well, just because it’s not just the technology works, but how do we support them? What is our sales engagement? How does our partner community embrace them? It’s great you have technology, but if we gouge them in some form or fashion or they felt uneasy about it, they wouldn’t recommend us. Robert Dutt: Two quick ones before we wrap up here. You’re talking about expanding in Canada, expanding the MSP business. It sounds like there’s opportunity there. If I’m a Canadian MSP listening and I wanted to start a conversation tomorrow, what’s the literal first step that you’d recommend they take to engage with you guys? Adam Hofeler: Yeah, they can reach us on our website that would go to our go-to-market team or an email at partners@zeronetworks.com would be the very, very first step. And again, if they’re just trying to learn about the technology or interested, let’s have a conversation and see if it’s the right mutual fit for not only Zero Networks, but for them to be brought into their portfolio. Robert Dutt: All right. And we have to ask this one. The partner program is called Zero to Sixty. I love that branding. It’s a cute little bit of marketing business, but here in Canada and other metric markets, Zero to Sixty just doesn’t have the same ring to it. It’s like a nice drive down a country road. Any chance we’ll see a Zero to 100 program for Canadian partners? Adam Hofeler: And if you like that, maybe we need to. I think I’m in. We would love to do nothing more but to gain more access to partners. And if it’s the naming convention that works, I’m in. Whatever works. Robert Dutt: Adam, I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you. Adam Hofeler: Thanks, Robert. Appreciate the time. Robert Dutt: There it is. My conversation with Adam Hofeler from Zero Networks. If there’s a line from this conversation that I think is worth sitting with, it’s that most security risk isn’t coming from exotic zero-day exploits. It’s coming from routine abuse of normal trusted access paths. That’s a finding from over 3 trillion activities across 400 enterprise environments. And it makes a pretty strong case for the shift from detect and respond to contained by default isn’t just marketing language. If microsegmentation is on your radar, whether as a security play or as a way to open cyber insurance conversations with your customers, maybe Zero to Sixty is worth a look for you. Tomorrow on In The Channel, I’m sitting down with Merium Khalid from Barracuda’s SOC to go through their managed XDR threat report, including the finding that 90% of ransomware incidents exploited firewalls, often through vulnerabilities more than a decade old. That’s tomorrow right here on ChannelBuzz.ca. Thanks for listening. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.

Podcast: Industrial Cybersecurity InsiderEpisode: Your OT Cybersecurity Strategy Is Failing: Here's WhyPub date: 2026-02-17Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationDino and Craig reunite to tackle the shifts occuring in industrial cybersecurity in 2026.They discuss how OT-focused IDS software companies are shifting away from managed services to partner with systems integrators who understand the plant floor.The conversation explores the challenges manufacturers face—from aging infrastructure spanning decades to flat layer-2 networks that give remote vendors unrestricted access.They emphasize that IT departments cannot effectively manage OT assets they don't own or understand, especially when dealing with equipment older than their cybersecurity staff.The episode covers the pitfalls of penetration testing in live manufacturing environments, the reality of shadow IT versus shadow OT, and why EDR solutions struggle in control system environments.Dino and Craig stress the importance of treating cybersecurity as a marathon rather than a sprint, starting with basic asset inventory and microsegmentation.They call on manufacturing leaders to stop deferring to IT for OT security, attend industry-specific conferences like S4X26, and partner with systems integrators who have deep automation expertise.With threats mounting, the time for action is now—not next quarter.Chapters:(00:00:00) - Welcome & What We've Been Up To(00:00:48) - The Big Shift: Why OT IDS Companies Are Backing Away From Managed Services(00:03:00) - The Shelfware Problem: When Security Tools Sit Unused(00:04:12) - Why Pen Testing Can Be Disruptive (or Dangerous) in Manufacturing Environments(00:05:54) - The Reality of Legacy Infrastructure: Equipment Older Than Your Cybersecurity Team(00:07:43) - Who Can Actually Patch Your Control Systems?(00:09:04) - Supply Chain Vulnerabilities: You're Only as Strong as Your Weakest Link(00:11:01) - The Last Mile Challenge: Asset Inventory, Microsegmentation & Starting Small(00:13:55) - The Shelfware to Tool-Switching Problem: Why Companies Are Reconsidering Their First Choice(00:16:18) - Shadow IT vs. Shadow OT: Who Really Owns Plant Floor Security?(00:19:00) - Why EDR Struggles in Control System Environments(00:21:35) - Time to Step Up: Why Manufacturing Leaders Can't Defer to IT Anymore(00:23:00) - Where to Learn: S4, Automation Fair, and Why You Need to Attend Industry Conferences(00:25:00) - Finding the Right Partner: Systems Integrators Who Speak Automation and Cybersecurity(00:27:00) - Final Thoughts: The Time for Action Is NowLinks And Resources:Want to Sponsor an episode or be a Guest? Reach out here.Industrial Cybersecurity Insider on LinkedInCybersecurity & Digital Safety on LinkedInBW Design Group CybersecurityDino Busalachi on LinkedInCraig Duckworth on LinkedInThanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to Industrial Cybersecurity Insider? Have some feedback you'd like to share? Connect with us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube to leave us a review!The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Industrial Cybersecurity Insider, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.

My conversation with Kurtis Minder cuts through the fantasy land most people live in when they talk about ransomware.This isn't about movie-style hackers or “just restore from backup” nonsense. It's about the industrialized ransomware economy—where threat actors operate with rules, quotas, minimum payouts, and negotiation playbooks that look a lot more like organized business than random crime.We get into the ugly realities organizations face when ransomware hits:How ransom negotiations actually work todayWhy cyber insurance often shapes decisions more than security teams doAnd the uncomfortable ethical tradeoffs executives are forced to make under real pressureWe also call out one of the biggest contributors to successful ransomware attacks: complacency. Most organizations have incident response plans that look great in PowerPoint and fall apart the second reality shows up. If you're not rehearsing, testing, and updating those plans, they're effectively worthless.Finally, we talk about what actually moves the needle. Not buzzwords. Not vendor bingo. Real strategy:Zero Trust done correctlyLeast privilege enforced, not “eventually planned”Microsegmentation that limits blast radius instead of praying backups workRansomware isn't going away. The only question is whether your organization is architected to absorb impact and survive, or whether you're funding the next criminal enterprise.Key TakeawaysRansomware is a structured business model, not chaos—negotiations follow rules and economics.Complacency kills response efforts; untested incident plans fail every time.Zero Trust, least privilege, and microsegmentation materially reduce ransomware blast radius when implemented correctly.

Please enjoy this encore of Word Notes. A zero trust security technique that isolates application workloads from each other, allowing each one to be protected individually. CyberWire Glossary link: ⁠https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/microsegmentation⁠ Audio reference link: “⁠Micro-Segmentation Masterpieces⁠,” PJ Kirner, Illumio CTO and Co-Founder, Tech Field Day, YouTube, 13 December 2020.

Please enjoy this encore of Word Notes. A zero trust security technique that isolates application workloads from each other, allowing each one to be protected individually. CyberWire Glossary link: ⁠https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/microsegmentation⁠ Audio reference link: “⁠Micro-Segmentation Masterpieces⁠,” PJ Kirner, Illumio CTO and Co-Founder, Tech Field Day, YouTube, 13 December 2020. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Connect to John Gilroy on LinkedIn   https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-gilroy/ Want to listen to other episodes? www.Federaltechpodcast.com It is rare to see AI applied to federal cybersecurity mandates. However, today, we will sit down with Louis Echenbaum from Color Tokens. He will unpack the concept of using AI to help federal leaders improve their ability to implement microsegmentation. We all know about Executive Order 14028 and the OMNB Memo M-22-09, which are forcing federal agencies to deploy a robust Zero Trust framework. The key components include identity and access management, asset management, continuous monitoring, and micro segmentation. During the interview, Louis Echenbaum expands on current challenges like legacy systems and visibility. For example, what happens once a malicious actor breaches a federal system? Some call this east-west traffic. The general response is to prioritize and segment data so the intruder is denied access. This concept looks good on paper, but in the real world, leaders encounter some issues. First, how can they know exactly what is on their network? This is perplexing in environments where endpoints are in areas that cannot be upgraded. Further, the move to a hybrid cloud offers varying levels of data segmentation. One system administrator may be competent with a specific cloud service provider but does not know all the details of another company. This skills gap can lead to coverage gaps and opportunities for attack. The solution Echenbaum suggests is to leverage AI to improve visibility and give leaders ways to prioritize datasets into appropriate microsegments.

International law enforcement take down the Breachforums domains. Researchers link exploitation campaigns targeting Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, and Fortinet. Juniper Networks patches over 200 vulnerabilities. Apple and Google update their bug bounties. Evaluating AI use in application security (AppSec) programs. Microsegmentation can contain ransomware much faster and yield better cyber insurance terms. The new RondoDox botnet exploits over 50 vulnerabilities. Researchers tag 13 unpatched Ivanti Endpoint Manager flaws. Our guest is Jason Manar, CISO of Kaseya, sharing his insight into how the private and public sectors can work together for national security. Hackers mistake a decoy for glory.  Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our daily intelligence roundup, Daily Briefing, and you'll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow CyberWire Daily on LinkedIn. CyberWire Guest Today we are joined by ⁠Jason Manar⁠, CISO of ⁠Kaseya⁠, sharing his insight into how the private and public sectors can/must work together for national security. Selected Reading FBI takes down BreachForums portal used for Salesforce extortion (Bleeping Computer) Cisco, Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks Devices Targeted in Coordinated Campaign (SecurityWeek) Juniper Networks Patches Critical Junos Space Vulnerabilities (OffSeq)   Apple Announces $2 Million Bug Bounty Reward for the Most Dangerous Exploits (WIRED) Google Launches AI Bug Bounty with $30,000 Top Reward (Infosecurity Magazine) In AI We Trust? Increasing AI Adoption in AppSec Despite Limited Oversight (Fastly) Reducing Risk: Microsegmentation Means Faster Incident Response, Lower Insurance Premiums for Organizations (Akamai) RondoDox Botnet Takes ‘Exploit Shotgun' Approach (SecurityWeek) ZDI Drops 13 Unpatched Ivanti Endpoint Manager Vulnerabilities (SecurityWeek) Pro-Russian hackers caught bragging about attack on fake water utility (The Record) Share your feedback. What do you think about CyberWire Daily? Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us by completing our brief listener survey. Thank you for helping us continue to improve our show. Want to hear your company in the show? N2K CyberWire helps you reach the industry's most influential leaders and operators, while building visibility, authority, and connectivity across the cybersecurity community. Learn more at sponsor.thecyberwire.com. The CyberWire is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Microsegmentation is a complex topic. We did an overview episode earlier this year, and we invited listeners to reach out to keep the microsegmentation conversation going. Today's guest did just that. Philip Griffiths is Head of Strategic Sales at Netfoundry. However, this isn't a sponsored show about NetFoundry. Philip is also involved in a working... Read more »

Microsegmentation is a complex topic. We did an overview episode earlier this year, and we invited listeners to reach out to keep the microsegmentation conversation going. Today's guest did just that. Philip Griffiths is Head of Strategic Sales at Netfoundry. However, this isn't a sponsored show about NetFoundry. Philip is also involved in a working... Read more »

Zero Trust: The Future of Cybersecurity with John Kindervag In this episode, Jim Love brings in John Kindervag, a globally recognized cybersecurity expert and the 'Godfather of Zero Trust,' to discuss the fundamentals and evolution of the Zero Trust model. With over 25 years of experience, John shares his journey from installing firewalls to pioneering the Zero Trust model during his time at Forrester Research. He explains the Five-Step Methodology for implementing Zero Trust and touches on the pivotal role policies play in cybersecurity. The discussion also covers the cultural and strategic aspects of cybersecurity, offering insights for both beginners and seasoned professionals. Tune in for an engaging conversation that dives deep into protecting your organization's critical assets. 00:00 Introduction and Replay Announcement 00:43 Cybersecurity Today: Weekend Edition 01:44 Meet John Kindervag: The Godfather of Zero Trust 02:08 The Birth of Zero Trust 04:31 Forrester Research and Zero Trust Development 08:30 Implementing Zero Trust: Challenges and Successes 17:50 Risk vs. Danger in Cybersecurity 26:05 Cultural Issues in Cybersecurity 31:01 Farmers and Technology 32:06 The Importance of IT in Business 32:44 Introduction to Zero Trust Methodology 32:59 Five Steps to Implement Zero Trust 33:32 Mapping Transaction Flows 34:43 Custom Architecture for Zero Trust 35:13 Defining Policies with the Kipling Method 36:22 Monitoring and Maintaining Zero Trust 39:05 Challenges and Success Stories in Zero Trust 42:20 Microsegmentation and Protect Surfaces 45:57 AI and Zero Trust 49:40 Advice for Implementing Zero Trust 53:48 Decision-Making and Leadership in Cybersecurity 57:37 The Future of Zero Trust 59:25 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Inside Zero Trust: John Kindervag and the Evolution of Cybersecurity In this episode of Cybersecurity Today: Weekend Edition, host Jim Love speaks with John Kindervag, the pioneer behind the Zero Trust model of cybersecurity. With over 25 years of industry experience, John delves into how the concept originated from his early work with firewalls, advocating for a system where no packet is trusted by default. He discusses the fundamental principles of Zero Trust, including defining protect surfaces, mapping transaction flows, and implementing microsegmentation. The conversation also touches on overcoming cultural and organizational challenges in cybersecurity, the inadequacies of traditional risk models, and adapting Zero Trust methodologies in the evolving landscape, including AI. Through thoughtful discourse and practical insights, John underscores the importance of strategic and tactical implementations in building resilient and secure systems. 00:00 Introduction to Cybersecurity Today 00:25 Meet John Kindervag: The Godfather of Zero Trust 01:50 The Birth of Zero Trust 04:08 Challenges and Evolution of Zero Trust 06:03 From Forrester to Practical Implementations 11:40 The Concept of Protect Surfaces 17:30 Risk vs. Danger in Cybersecurity 30:54 Farmers and Technology 31:48 The Importance of IT in Business 32:26 Introduction to Zero Trust 32:41 Five Steps to Zero Trust 33:14 Mapping Transaction Flows 34:25 Custom Architecture for Zero Trust 34:55 Defining Policies with the Kipling Method 36:04 Monitoring and Maintaining Zero Trust 36:28 The Concept of Anti-Fragile Systems 38:47 Challenges and Success Stories in Zero Trust 42:02 Microsegmentation and Protect Surfaces 45:39 AI and Zero Trust 49:22 Advice for Implementing Zero Trust 50:37 Military Insights and Decision Making 57:19 The Future of Zero Trust 59:07 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Microsegmentation divides a network into boundaries or segments to provide fine-grained access control to resources within those segments. On today's Packet Protector we talk about network and security reasons for employing microsegmentation, different methods (agents, overlays, network controls, and so on), how microsegmentation fits into a zero trust strategy, and the product landscape. Episode Links:... Read more »

Microsegmentation divides a network into boundaries or segments to provide fine-grained access control to resources within those segments. On today's Packet Protector we talk about network and security reasons for employing microsegmentation, different methods (agents, overlays, network controls, and so on), how microsegmentation fits into a zero trust strategy, and the product landscape. Episode Links:... Read more »

In this episode of the "Do This, Not That" podcast, Jay Schwedelson dives deep into the power of specificity in marketing. He outlines how using microsegmentation can dramatically enhance your email open rates and social media engagement, leading to more conversions. Jay emphasizes the need to stop vague marketing messages and instead focus on clear, targeted communication that resonates with your audience.=================================================================Best Moments:0:00 - Introduction0:26 - The problem with vague marketing1:50 - Microsegmentation explained2:15 - Business examples of microsegmentation2:54 - Consumer examples of microsegmentation4:00 - Applying microsegmentation to other marketing channels5:58 - Sponsor message: Marigold6:26 - Jay's personal story: Vegas guys' trip dilemma=================================================================Check out our FREE + VIRTUAL EVENTS! -> EVENTASTIC.comGuruConference.comDeliveredConference.com=================================================================MASSIVE thank you to our Sponsor, Marigold!!Looking to master consumer engagement in 2025? The 2025 Consumer Trends Index from Marigold reveals how AI, economic pressures, and personalized marketing are shaping consumer expectations. Uncover data-driven insights to foster stronger brand relationships, strike the right balance between personalization and privacy, and turn casual customers into loyal advocates.Download the 2025 Consumer Trends Index today at meetmarigold.com/guru and stay one step ahead of evolving consumer demands!

In this Risky Business News sponsored interview, Tom Uren talks to Benny Lakunishok, CEO and cofounder of ZeroNetworks, about network microsegmentation, why it is important, how to do it, and what the NSA gets wrong about it.

Why doesn't malware hop from smartphone to smartphone as with computers? That's the question that led former Airgap CTO Satish Mohan and his co-founders to a fundamental rethink of network segmentation. Mohan sat down with guest host and Zscaler CTO in Residence Sanjit Ganguli to discuss Airgap's origin story, challenges with traditional segmentation, and how a novel architecture helps to overcome them.

Earlier this year, the NSA released updated zero-trust guidance in which microsegmentation is listed as a daunting, advanced endeavor, only suitable to the most mature organizations. Zero Networks is committed to challenging this sentiment. While some may hesitate, thinking microsegmentation is beyond their reach, we urge organizations to reconsider. Waiting is not an option when it comes to securing your network against evolving threats. By prioritizing microsegmentation, you're taking a proactive stance against unauthorized lateral movement, thwarting advanced attacks, and effectively blocking ransomware. Zero Networks has helped organizations of all sizes, maturity, and complexity levels to deploy our radically simple microsegmentation solution in a click, without breaking anything, and with little to no effort.As ransomware attacks double, microsegmentation has been hailed by Gartner, Forrester, the NSA, and leading security trade media outlets, as the most promising solution for halting lateral movement and satisfying zero trust guidelines. You can't have a zero trust architecture without microsegmentation – but you also need to implement a solution quickly, without breaking anything, and without extensive costs and complexities. Zero Networks offers exactly this solution. Zero Networks' microsegmentation solution locks down lateral movement, effectively stranding hackers and preventing them from spreading ransomware. For an added layer of security, we apply MFA authentication to the network layer, allowing organizations to protect assets that could not be easily protected by MFA before: legacy applications, databases, OT/IoT devices, mainframes, on-prem VMs, and IaaS VMs. Our just-in-time MFA also applies an additional layer of security to privileged remote admin protocols like RDP, SSH, and WinRM – commonly exploited by attackers. This also supports organizations with compliance needs. “Never trust, always verify” comes automatically with Zero Networks.Zero Networks' microsegmentation solution provides agentless, automated, and multi-factor authentication (MFA) powered architecture. By monitoring and learning all network connections over a 30-day period, Zero Networks creates precise firewall rules that are centrally applied to all assets. This agentless architecture ensures that every asset, whether on-premises or in the cloud, including OT/IoT devices, is segmented without disrupting normal operations. One of the key challenges with traditional microsegmentation solutions is their complexity and associated costs. Forrester highlights the difficulty in quantifying the business benefits of microsegmentation due to its indirect impact on productivity and user experience. A global independent investment bank, Evercore, was undergoing the major challenge of effectively responding to an incident when a workstation was compromised, and a threat actor was able to gain access to their network to move laterally. They had firewalls, whitelists, blacklists and other measures that could slow them down but nothing that could immediately shut them down. Chris Turek, CIO of Evercore, said “Zero Networks is creating a new sphere of security capabilities.See the platform for yourself - reach out to us at zeronetworks.com for a demo.Learn more about Zero Networks: https://itspm.ag/zeronet-al2d2Note: This story contains promotional content. Learn more.Guest: Benny Lakunishok, Co-Founder and CEO, Zero Networks [@ZeroNetworks]On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/bennyl/On Twitter | https://x.com/lakunishokResourcesLearn more and catch more stories from Zero Networks: www.itspmagazine.com/directory/zero-networksLearn more about 7 Minutes on ITSPmagazine Short Brand Story Podcasts: https://www.itspmagazine.com/purchase-programsNewsletter Archive: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/tune-into-the-latest-podcasts-7109347022809309184/Business Newsletter Signup: https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-business-updates-sign-upAre you interested in telling your story?https://www.itspmagazine.com/telling-your-story

Earlier this year, the NSA released updated zero-trust guidance in which microsegmentation is listed as a daunting, advanced endeavor, only suitable to the most mature organizations. Zero Networks is committed to challenging this sentiment. While some may hesitate, thinking microsegmentation is beyond their reach, we urge organizations to reconsider. Waiting is not an option when it comes to securing your network against evolving threats. By prioritizing microsegmentation, you're taking a proactive stance against unauthorized lateral movement, thwarting advanced attacks, and effectively blocking ransomware. Zero Networks has helped organizations of all sizes, maturity, and complexity levels to deploy our radically simple microsegmentation solution in a click, without breaking anything, and with little to no effort.As ransomware attacks double, microsegmentation has been hailed by Gartner, Forrester, the NSA, and leading security trade media outlets, as the most promising solution for halting lateral movement and satisfying zero trust guidelines. You can't have a zero trust architecture without microsegmentation – but you also need to implement a solution quickly, without breaking anything, and without extensive costs and complexities. Zero Networks offers exactly this solution. Zero Networks' microsegmentation solution locks down lateral movement, effectively stranding hackers and preventing them from spreading ransomware. For an added layer of security, we apply MFA authentication to the network layer, allowing organizations to protect assets that could not be easily protected by MFA before: legacy applications, databases, OT/IoT devices, mainframes, on-prem VMs, and IaaS VMs. Our just-in-time MFA also applies an additional layer of security to privileged remote admin protocols like RDP, SSH, and WinRM – commonly exploited by attackers. This also supports organizations with compliance needs. “Never trust, always verify” comes automatically with Zero Networks.Zero Networks' microsegmentation solution provides agentless, automated, and multi-factor authentication (MFA) powered architecture. By monitoring and learning all network connections over a 30-day period, Zero Networks creates precise firewall rules that are centrally applied to all assets. This agentless architecture ensures that every asset, whether on-premises or in the cloud, including OT/IoT devices, is segmented without disrupting normal operations. One of the key challenges with traditional microsegmentation solutions is their complexity and associated costs. Forrester highlights the difficulty in quantifying the business benefits of microsegmentation due to its indirect impact on productivity and user experience. A global independent investment bank, Evercore, was undergoing the major challenge of effectively responding to an incident when a workstation was compromised, and a threat actor was able to gain access to their network to move laterally. They had firewalls, whitelists, blacklists and other measures that could slow them down but nothing that could immediately shut them down. Chris Turek, CIO of Evercore, said “Zero Networks is creating a new sphere of security capabilities.See the platform for yourself - reach out to us at zeronetworks.com for a demo.Learn more about Zero Networks: https://itspm.ag/zeronet-al2d2Note: This story contains promotional content. Learn more.Guest: Benny Lakunishok, Co-Founder and CEO, Zero Networks [@ZeroNetworks]On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/bennyl/On Twitter | https://x.com/lakunishokResourcesLearn more and catch more stories from Zero Networks: www.itspmagazine.com/directory/zero-networksLearn more about 7 Minutes on ITSPmagazine Short Brand Story Podcasts: https://www.itspmagazine.com/purchase-programsNewsletter Archive: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/tune-into-the-latest-podcasts-7109347022809309184/Business Newsletter Signup: https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-business-updates-sign-upAre you interested in telling your story?https://www.itspmagazine.com/telling-your-story

Let's imagine you have simple lock on your front door. Something a burglar or vandal could easily pick, gaining unrestricted access to your residence. Fearful of the potential loss you add a deadbolt lock to the door, making it much more difficult to enter.In cybersecurity, there's a similar strategy called Zero Trust microsegmentation.Today's guest, Bria Haugli, cybersecurity expert and CEO of SideChannel, explains how Zero Trust microsegmentation can reinforce managed detection and response (MDR) initiatives by enabling tighter access control. And more importantly, by containing the damage from breaches and malware, including insidious ransomware.Don't miss our conversation about this paradigm shift in network security.Learn how Overwatch OT/IoT Security Services can keep you protected end-to-end:  https://www.highwirenetworks.com/services/overwatch-iot-security/ Interested in SideChannel's Enclave? Learn more: https://sidechannel.com/enclave/ To get more cybersecurity news from High Wire Networks, visit: https://www.highwirenetworks.com/news-events/ To learn more about the Cybersecurity Simplified Podcast and to browse previous episodes, visit:https://www.highwirenetworks.com/cybersecurity-podcasts/For more information about this episode, visit: https://www.highwirenetworks.com/cybersecurity-simplified-episode-47-why-reinforce-mdr-with-zero-trust-microsegmentation/Have an inquiry or topic request, reach out to: podcast@highwirenetworks.com 

A zero trust security technique that isolates application workloads from each other, allowing each one to be protected individually. CyberWire Glossary link: https://thecyberwire.com/glossary/microsegmentation Audio reference link: “Micro-Segmentation Masterpieces,” PJ Kirner, Illumio CTO and Co-Founder, Tech Field Day, YouTube, 13 December 2020.

In this episode of the IPv6 Buzz podcast, Ed, Scott, and Tom talk about microsegmentation with IPv6 and what the IT use cases look like.

In this episode of the IPv6 Buzz podcast, Ed, Scott, and Tom talk about microsegmentation with IPv6 and what the IT use cases look like. The post IPv6 Buzz 109: Microsegmentation With IPv6 appeared first on Packet Pushers.

In this episode of the IPv6 Buzz podcast, Ed, Scott, and Tom talk about microsegmentation with IPv6 and what the IT use cases look like.

In this episode of the IPv6 Buzz podcast, Ed, Scott, and Tom talk about microsegmentation with IPv6 and what the IT use cases look like. The post IPv6 Buzz 109: Microsegmentation With IPv6 appeared first on Packet Pushers.

In this episode of the IPv6 Buzz podcast, Ed, Scott, and Tom talk about microsegmentation with IPv6 and what the IT use cases look like.

In this episode of the IPv6 Buzz podcast, Ed, Scott, and Tom talk about microsegmentation with IPv6 and what the IT use cases look like. The post IPv6 Buzz 109: Microsegmentation With IPv6 appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Show Resources Here were the resources we covered in the episode: Ad Scheduling Account Organization NEW LinkedIn Learning course about LinkedIn Ads by AJ Wilcox Contact us at Podcast@B2Linked.com with ideas for what you'd like AJ to cover.   Show Transcript Micro segmentation of your LinkedIn Ads. Your LinkedIn Rep says it's a bad idea. I say it's great. Let's discuss why this strategy is so divisive. On this week's episode of the LinkedIn Ads Show. Welcome to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Here's your host, AJ Wilcox. Hey there LinkedIn Ads fanatics, your LinkedIn Rep may have warned you against something called micro segmentation, which is what they call it when you create a campaign that has too few members and your target audience. Now, I highly recommend micro segmentation. But our definitions are very different. On this episode, we'll dive into how you can use segmentation to get better ad performance, easier reporting, and definitely to learn more about who your target audience is, and what they engage with. Let's jump right in and hit it. And definitely the next time I decided to coin a term, I'm going to try to make sure that it doesn't match what a LinkedIn Rep warns you against. So everyone knows that LinkedIn ads is great for lead generation. That is, of course, why we come to the platform is access to an ultra premium audience. But a little known fact about LinkedIn Ads is that it's also spectacular for market research. And by market research, I'm not saying run ads, asking people about what they think about your company or anything like that. But you probably already have a good idea of who your ideal customer persona is, right? That's why you're using LinkedIn Ads. So you can target exactly those people. So for example, let's say that your ideal target audience is decision makers in IT. It would be really easy to create one campaign targeting the IT job function, and then layer in all seniorites that or manager and above. And you can run that and that's totally fine. But then after you've run that campaign, you don't get any sort of understanding further about your audience, you might get good ad performance, you might get bad ad performance somewhere in between. But ultimately, because you don't have anything to compare this against, you are left with no levers to pull. So instead, imagine that instead of that one campaign, you've created four separate campaigns. One is IT with a manager seniority. Another one might be IT with a director seniority, another might be IT with a VP seniority. And then finally, your fourth one would be IT with a CXO seniority. So let's say you are running an AB test to this audience, well, you put the same AB test in each of those four campaigns and now you're targeting the same size of audience, you didn't have to create many more ads, you just created the same to over and over again, but now you have four campaigns that you can compare against each other, to learn more about what different segments of your audience are doing, what they like, what they engage with. By doing this, you can get some insights like for instance, maybe CIOs convert higher to the lead. But maybe they're harder for the sales team to get a hold of for a demo. So their cost per SQL ends up being higher. And maybe IT managers have a higher cost per click, but they're easier for sales to get an appointment with. So maybe they have initial higher costs, but when you let it all bake out in your sales funnel, it all of a sudden makes a lot more sense. I like to do this basically, anytime that I'm targeting an audience with multiple singularities. I'll break up that audience by seniority, so I can learn who likes what content. You might see that certain offers are interesting to those who are VP and above. And other offers are more interesting to those who are like manager and director level. And this is really easy to do, you could do the same thing by segmenting by industry. So for instance, let's say you're going after tech companies, what you could do is take LinkedIn's industry of internet, which is obviously very broad. It includes things like Google and Facebook, and Snapchat are all classified as internet. And then you might do a separate campaign for anyone who says that they're in computer software. And then if you compare these results against each other, you might find that one industry actually produces higher quality leads than another. And if you can figure that out early, great. Now you can pare down your budget for the one that isn't working, and feed the one who is and get more of those high quality leads that your sales team loves. A lot of times I'll see campaigns that either clients have been running before they've come to us, or accounts that I'm auditing. And I'll see that they'll have one campaign with a whole bunch of different job functions. So let's say marketing, and accounting, and business development are all in the same campaign. And when you ask them about it, they'll say, well, our message really is irrelevant to all of those people. And I'm not disagreeing with that fact. Your message could be really good for all those people. But the fact that they are all lumped into the same broad campaign means that you'll never learn. Whereas if you broke it out, you might find that, oh, wow, accountants don't interact with this at all. So hey, maybe we spend less on them or maybe we create a custom Add Variation just for the accountants. And this is data that you would only know if you've broken them out. To learn more, you've got to have them in different audiences. We've done the same thing with geographies. So of course, if you're advertising to a whole bunch of different countries, you know that the culture in each of those countries is going to be very different. And so if you haven't broken them out, you might not be able to tell. The big one I remember from my past, I was advertising for franchises in all of North America. And I found that Canada was not converting very well at all. And I had no idea why it eventually dawned on me that in my form, I was asking for a zip code. And in Canada, they don't call it a zip code, they call it a postal code. And so it was very, very apparent that I was an American, trying to advertise to Americans, and just added Canada on. So as soon as I gave them their own form, conversion start flowing in. So you can do this, if you are going after all North America. Or maybe you're advertising to all English speaking countries, like the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, as long as your audience sizes are large enough, in each of those countries by themselves. If you give them their own campaign, it then allows you to suss out and find what are those cultural differences that are making people convert higher, interact higher, convert lower, interact lower, we've even done this in the US with time zones. So we'll add all of the states that are in the Pacific Time Zone, to their own campaign, all states that are mountain time into their own campaign, Central Time, Eastern Time Zone, etc. And by doing that, it allows us to do some really cool day parting. Because if you start showing ads to people on the East Coast, at 6am, their time, you'll all of a sudden be advertising to people on the west coast at 3am, which isn't a great time to be advertising. So if you've put them in different time zones, and then you're turning your campaigns on and off at those times, it's gonna be a lot more exact, you won't waste your money nearly as much. If you want to dive more into day parting and ad scheduling, definitely check out episode 63. 7:31 We also really like to segment by company size. So what you can do is say, hey, if we go after all companies that are size 200. and above, well, let's put 200 to 500 in its own campaign, and then 500 to 1000 in its own campaign, and then maybe 1000 to 5000 in its own, and then 5000 and above in its own. And now all of a sudden you get to judge what is your cost per lead by company size. And a lot of sales teams will look at a company size to tell you what quality of lead that is. And they care more about the larger companies, because they're gonna have a lot more budget to do this. And that's super easy to do exactly like we talked about earlier. And there's a whole lot of other segments that you can also break up campaigns by, for instance, you could do field of study. So what did someone study in college, you can do growth rate of a company, those that are growing slowly versus those that are rapidly growing, and message them differently, you can really segment by any sort of targeting that is broad. And what I mean by broad, it means that there are a few options that broadly define the entire market, it doesn't usually make sense to do this to segment by job title, or by group. Because when you put one set of people into a group, or specify one job title, and then you specify another, you're still leaving out a huge chunk of the population. This isn't a great way of splitting the audience up to learn more about it, you're going to end up with really small target audiences. So think about how you can break up by some of those elements like seniority or job function, industry, geography, company size, those types of things. Plus, it really didn't cost you anything extra to break out all of these micro segments of your audience. But now you can test all of your offers and motivations to find out what engages and drives each micro segment of your target audience. Plus, now you have all these extra levers that you can pull when you want to improve performance. So for instance, if you're pacing ahead of budget one month, it's really easy to just go down and bid down the lowest performing micro segments. And that's going to naturally push your ad performance higher while restricting the budget. Or maybe your sales team tells you that certain types of leads are worth more to them. They're a higher quality lead, so you can bid down or shut off the micro segments that are pulling your performance down and feed the ones that are more like what sales wants. And since you already have these campaigns, you can take it a step further by adjusting your ad copy to talk directly to the people. For instance, in the past, when I was going after business owners or CEOs, I would put in the ad copy, "Hey CEOs" to try to get their attention. Because you've already defined who your audience is in these little micro segments, if you can think of a call out to them that they would recognize, this becomes a test that you can easily do to call out to people. One thing that I noticed when I was doing this, calling out to people by some sort of an identity, it certainly makes sense sometimes when they identify themselves by that entity. But sometimes you'll call out to people, and they don't define themselves by that. So for instance, if I were going after marketing directors, if I shout out to them, "Hey Directors", they may not actually identify themselves, strongly by the fact that they're a director, they might identify themselves more powerfully as marketers, so I might do better to say, "Hey Marketers", or "Hey Marketing Leaders". Okay, here's a quick sponsor break. And then we'll dive into how you can actually use these micro segments to optimize and control your account performance. 11:26 The LinkedIn Ads Show is proudly brought to you by B2Linked.com, the LinkedIn Ads experts. If the performance of your LinkedIn Ads is important to you, B2Linked is the agency you'll want to work with. We've spent over $150 million on LinkedIn Ads, and no one outperforms us on getting you the lowest cost per lead, and the most scale. We're official LinkedIn partners and you'll deal only with LinkedIn Ads, experts from day one. Apply to work with us on the contact page of B2Linked.com, we'd absolutely love to get to work with you. Alright, let's go ahead and jump into how you can actually control and optimize your account when you have these micro segments. So I use the example before how if you're pacing ahead of budget, you can turn some things off that aren't super helpful to your account. Every so often, a client will come to us mid month and say, for some reason, my boss just cut our budget in half for this month, we have to slow things way down. Well, if the account has an average cost per lead of like $80, for instance, it's really quick to go and segment all of my campaigns by their cost per lead, and sort from high to low. And all of a sudden, here's this list of the 20 campaigns that are bringing leads in for significantly more than that. So I have some that are bringing in leads for $100 and some $150 and $250, for instance. So we're reacting to a pretty urgent call from the client to cut down on budget and spend less. But by doing it this way, we go in and pause all of the campaign's that are performing worse than average, we've stopped spending as rapidly. And now we don't have spend going to those campaigns that are having a high cost per lead. So as we're cutting down on our spend, we're also watching our average cost per lead drop. So it was an ad. And after cutting out the higher CPL campaigns, we might be averaging 60 or 50. And it's a great way to finish that month, especially if we know that we had less budget to work with. We had a client who was in the business financing space, and they had three different industries they were going after. So naturally, we had the campaigns all segmented out by industry and we found that the retail industry for whatever reason, was underperforming compared to the others. And so it was really easy to go through as a blanket change and pause or bid down all of the retail industry segments. And we put that budget into the to other industries that were performing well. And it's important to know that if you had all three of these industries lumped into the same campaign, you would have totally missed that fact that that was an optimization you could do. If you haven't listened to episode seven, where we talk about account organization, you'll definitely want to go and listen to that. Because I recommend a campaign naming structure that identifies within the campaign name exactly who that audience is. And what's so cool about this is when we micro segment and we're describing who the audience is right within the campaign name, it makes reporting super easy, and gives you capabilities that you wouldn't have otherwise. So for instance, if all of your campaigns that are targeting directors have something like DIR for director in them, when you go to start your campaigns and look at the results by campaign, you can very quickly find all of those that are targeting directors. And if you find that directors are performing really well, great, you now know all of the campaigns to go and increase your bids on or give some expanded budget. Also in our campaigns, we identify the type of targeting we're using. So we might put JF in a campaign name, when it's targeting by job function, we might put JT, if it's targeting by job title. Then when we get all of the results, let's say from the whole sales funnel, we can very quickly combine in a pivot table all of those audience names, and combine all of the performance from job title targeting versus job function versus skills targeting versus groups targeting. And we'll find some things like oh, wow, job function over here is more expensive, or leads to more volume, or groups targeting is really, really limited on audience size. But boy, it's efficient when it works. So definitely go back and listen to episode seven to get more information about how we do that so you can do the same thing. 15:57 I'm sure many of you already know my feelings on using audience expansion on LinkedIn. Let me tell you why I hate it. Because it is exactly the opposite of micro segmentation. We're talking about taking specific audiences and breaking them out so that we can compare them against each other and learn from the differences. Well, when you use audience expansion, it takes an existing large audience, and it adds people to it, that you don't know who they are. You don't get to gauge the quality of that audience until later when your sales team comes to you and says, hey, the quality of leads have been really crappy recently. So not only are you giving LinkedIn the opportunity to insert low quality audiences into your campaign, but it mashes those audiences together in a really opaque or non transparent way, and makes it impossible to actually learn from. So if you want to expand on your audiences, I would highly recommend go and create a look alike audience instead, because at least a look alike audience will allow you to run the native audience and the look alike that was created from it separately. And now you can compare and find out like, oh, look alikes are performing well, or no, they're not, we should stop doing that. So please, please, please, if you have audience expansion turned on anywhere in your account, please go turn it off. You can thank me later. So I can already hear a couple of you saying like, well, if I break out all of my audiences into micro segments, that's a lot of campaigns to manage. And yeah, that's the truth, you may be managing more campaigns, but it only takes a few minutes to create a duplicate of a campaign. And so the rewards of doing this are much, much higher than I feel like what the cost increase is for you in managing the account in your time. Plus, we manage accounts with 1000s of campaigns in them. So I can tell you, it's definitely scalable, it's possible, you're not going to make a huge mistake by breaking things out to learn more about your audience. It's also really likely that you're not going to be running all of these campaigns forever. Because once you find those micro audience segments that are underperforming in comparison to others, you can always cut them out by pausing. I mean, obviously, pausing is the best way, but you could always bid them down if you just wanted to get their costs lower. And when you take those campaigns out of the mix, you're giving yourself fewer campaigns to manage. I can also hear some of you saying, Well, my LinkedIn Rep says that I should only run campaigns that have an audience size of at least 300,000. Well, by breaking up your existing audiences into smaller segments, you're still targeting the same audience size in total. So you can tell your LinkedIn Rep, we're still targeting the same people, they're just in more campaigns. Plus, now you'll see better performance with your ability to turn off or bid down any segments of the non performers, which you wouldn't even be able to tell were being targeted before when it was just one big lump campaign. And my opinion is, you're already paying a premium for using LinkedIn, which means you're paying more for LinkedIn leads than you are under their channels. So why not have that budget also give you insights into the behavior of your customer persona. Plus, everyone who's running LinkedIn ads is always looking for ways of decreasing costs, because costs are already so high. This is one of the ways that you can do that really effectively. All right, I've got the episode resources for you coming right up. So stick around 19:29 Thank you for listening to the LinkedIn Ads show. Hungry for more? AJ Wilcox, take it away. All right, here are a couple of great resources for you. Number one, go check out Episode 63 on ad scheduling. To find out how we schedule our ads at different times of day and different days of the week. Check out Episode 07 about account organization for how you can make it easier to report and easier to find insights. If you or someone on your team are looking to learn more about LinkedIn Ads, check out the course that I did on LinkedIn Learning with LinkedIn. The link is right there in the show notes below. And this is by far the least expensive, and the best quality course out there. If you're a new listener to the show, hit that subscribe button. So you can hear more of this when we come out with new episodes weekly. And please do consider rating. And definitely leave us a review on the podcast. We would absolutely love to hear what you think. And when you leave a review, we'll shout you out live on the show. With feedback or suggestions on the podcast, reach out to us at Podcast@B2Linked.com. And with that being said, we'll see you back here next week. Cheering you on in your LinkedIn Ads initiatives.