Unique community-driven event series blends competition with education, helping security professionals advance their real-world skills in zero trust, segmentation, and lateral movement defense
Zero Networks, a leading provider of zero trust security solutions, congratulates Hans Vermeulen (CISSP, CCSP, CCSK, CISA, SCF), Architect, Platform Security at Vodafone Group, for being selected as the grand p**** winner of the 2025 Containment Island competition. By participating in a 4-week event series of practical webinars and weekly challenges, not only has Vermeulen gained Continuing Professional Education (CPE) credits and practical skills for network segmentation, zero trust and stopping lateral movement, but they have also earned an all expenses paid trip to the Bahamas.
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From CISOs at global enterprises, to hands-on architects and analysts at regional firms, the reach and enthusiasm of Containment Island proves just how vital containment and network segmentation are in threat landscape.
“Zero Networks believes in the benefits of microsegmentation so much that we were willing to pay for a luxury vacation for a security practitioner just to help more security professionals gain critical insights into stopping lateral movement,” said Daisy Spiridopoulos, Vice President of Marketing at Zero Networks. “I am incredibly proud of my team for the planning and execution of Containment Island and its impact. We were blown away by the engagement from the cybersecurity community, which included participation from professionals across 20 countries and hundreds of companies. C************** to Hans on their dedication to surviving the breach to hit the beach.”
With ransomware fueling a cybercrime economy estimated in the trillions of dollars globally and attackers continuing to target organizations of every size and sector, traditional network defenses – built to keep intruders out rather than contain them once inside – are no longer enough. Containment Island was designed as a community-oriented hub for information sharing, bringing together top minds in security to educate professionals about real-world approaches for deploying segmentation and zero trust strategies that actually work.
From CISOs at global enterprises, to hands-on architects and analysts at regional firms, the reach and enthusiasm of Containment Island proves just how vital containment and network segmentation are in threat landscape. Participants competing for the grand p**** – representing verticals such as finance, healthcare, legal, education, energy, transportation and technology – committed to multiple sessions, campfire chats, and quizzes to earn points each week. Content spanned vulnerability prioritization, top frameworks and where they fall short, pen testing, AI’s role in identity and email attacks, and much more. All Containment Island content is now available to watch On-Demand.
In addition to subject matter experts from Zero Networks, featured speakers and thought leaders that participants heard from throughout the series included: Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder of CrowdStrike; Chase Cunningham, “Dr. Zero Trust”; Aaron Goodwin, CISO, B. Riley Financial; Jackie McGuire, Principal Analyst, Security Analytics, Operations, and Strategy, The Cube Research; Chris Steffen, VP of Research, EMA; Michael Matok, Incident Remediation and Recover Lead, Sygnia; Omer Tal, Director of Innovation, Seemplicity; Patrick “PO” Orzechowski, Field CISO, Torq.
“Containment Island mirrored real-world conditions and challenged us to think differently about containment, automation, and identity in a true zero trust environment,” said Vermeulen. “It was a rewarding experience – valuable far beyond the chance at a grand p****. Thank you, Zero Networks!”
During Containment Island, Zero Networks also launched the network segmentation maturity quiz. This quiz, which weaves together Zero’s own segmentation maturity model with CISA’s Zero Trust Maturity Model and the ITIL Maturity Model, serves as a customized benchmarking tool. Completing the quiz, which is free and takes five minutes or less, displays results on a network segmentation maturity spectrum benchmarked against industry peers and provides a personalized report that paves the user’s path to blocking lateral movement.
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