Microsegmentation
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
Microsegmentation is network segmentation dialed up to 11. Instead of segmenting by subnet, you create rules for EVERY workload. Pod A can talk to Pod B on port 443 only. Everything else is denied. It's like giving every person in the building their own personal hallway connecting only to specific rooms.
Real Talk
Microsegmentation applies granular network policies at the workload level rather than the network segment level. In Kubernetes, implemented via NetworkPolicies. Service mesh implementations (Istio, Linkerd) provide L7 microsegmentation with identity-based policies and mTLS.
When You'll Hear This
"Kubernetes NetworkPolicies give us microsegmentation — each pod has explicit allow rules." / "Microsegmentation means even if an attacker gets into one pod, they can't reach others."
Related Terms
Network Segmentation
Network Segmentation divides your network into isolated zones. The web servers can't talk to the database directly.
Service Mesh
In a microservices system, every service needs to handle retries, timeouts, mutual TLS, and send traces. You could code all that in every service.
Zero Trust
Zero Trust means 'never trust, always verify.' Even if you're inside the company network, you still have to prove who you are for every request.