Case Study: The Master Group achieves 80% attack surface reduction with Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation

The Master Group Reduces Its Attack Surface by 80% With Illumio

The Master Group, Canada’s largest independent HVAC‑R distributor with 68 branches and thousands of IT assets, needed stronger protection against ransomware and lateral (east‑west) movement. Despite perimeter firewalls and endpoint tools, the security team lacked visibility into server‑to‑server connections and didn’t have the time or resources to manually audit and segment traffic, so they adopted a Zero Trust microsegmentation strategy.

Following a successful proof of concept, The Master Group rolled out Illumio Core to visualize application dependencies, close unnecessary ports, and enforce host‑based Zero Trust Segmentation with a lightweight agent and minimal operational overhead. The deployment delivered immediate visibility, uncovered and eliminated risky open ports, requires only about 30 minutes a week to manage, caused no downtime, and is estimated to reduce the exploitable attack surface by roughly 80%.

The Master Group

François Lepage

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Manager