Artificial intelligence is compressing cyberattack timelines from months to minutes, forcing enterprises to rethink how quickly they can segment and secure their networks.

While network segmentation has been a gold standard security practice for years, many organizations are still operating with outdated, static approaches that lack the speed and heightened granularity required to defend against modern threats. Ofer Wolf, senior vice president and general manager of enterprise security at Akamai, has worked across firewall and microsegmentation technologies and describes the current shift as a move from coarse, first-generation segmentation toward more dynamic, application-level controls that evolve with risk.

"Something that would have taken months will now take minutes, take hours, but it's not days, it's even faster than days and we need, as a defending side, to adapt to that," Wolf said, explaining how AI enables attackers to operate in parallel and accelerate lateral movement inside networks.

As a result, organizations can no longer rely on traditional patch cycles, legacy systems or delayed response strategies but instead must adopt near real-time segmentation and threat containment.

In this audio interview with Information Security Media Group (see audio link below photo), Wolf also discussed:

• The evolution from static segmentation to dynamic microsegmentation across enterprise environments;
• How AI is reducing the time and effort required to discover assets and enforce segmentation policies;
• Akamai's approach to integrating segmentation, zero trust access and AI-driven threat detection into a unified platform.

Wolf is senior vice president and general manager of Akamai's Enterprise Security business within the company's larger security technology Group. He is responsible for Akamai's zero trust-focused security solutions, including microsegmentation, ZTNA and multifactor authentication.