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Air Gapped

An air-gapped network is completely isolated from external connections, preventing any outside access to sensitive systems. This approach is used to protect critical data or to contain compromised machines before they can spread malware.

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About this video

An air-gapped network is a segment that has been fully isolated from external networks, the internet, and any other systems it does not explicitly need to communicate with. Unlike standard network segmentation, which may still allow controlled traffic between zones, an air gap means there is simply no pathway in or out. This level of isolation is typically reserved for environments where the sensitivity of the data or the criticality of the systems makes any external exposure unacceptable. In a typical network architecture, web servers facing the internet may be separated from backend database servers through segmentation, but both still exist within a connected environment. An air-gapped system takes isolation a step further by removing that system entirely from any broader network communication. This design is common in government, defense, and industrial control environments where a breach could have severe consequences. Air gapping is also an important incident response technique. When a device is suspected of being infected with malware, disconnecting it from the network creates an air gap that prevents the threat from propagating to other machines. This containment step limits damage and buys time for investigation and remediation without putting the rest of the environment at risk.

What you'll learn

What's covered

Airgapped Networks

Key terms

Air-Gapped Network
A network that is physically isolated from other networks and the internet, preventing any unauthorized connectivity or the spread of threats to or from connected systems.
Network Segmentation
The practice of dividing a network into smaller segments to improve performance and limit the spread of security threats.
Malware
Software specifically designed to disrupt, damage, or gain unauthorized access to a system.
Virus
Malicious code that attaches itself to legitimate programs and replicates when executed.

Topics

Air Gapped Networks Network Isolation Physical Security Network Security Threat Containment Critical Infrastructure

Transcript

Air Gapped Networks

Sometimes when we isolate something, we really don't want it to talk to anything. This is what's called air gapped.

If we're running some web servers that we want end users to be able to connect to from the internet, then we want connectivity there. And perhaps we have some isolation here, an isolated network between the database server and the web servers right here.

So what is air gapped? Let's say now that there is some super secret sensitive information that's on this server right here and this database server. We may not want this connected to the outside world at all. What we may want to do is actually have this interconnected there, but nothing to the outside world or any other devices. That means there is no outside connectivity. We call this air gapped.

A good example of an air gap that we create is maybe if we get some sort of virus on a machine. If we get a virus on a machine, we don't want that machine connected to the rest of the network. So what we do is we create this air gap to the rest of the network, so that way this doesn't have access to any other machine on that network and can't get any other machines compromised on this network.

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