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Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/identity-aware-proxy-and-microsegmentation-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-07-31 · downloaded from the live page
Zero Trust Networking · Patent LandscapeIdentity Aware Proxy and Microsegmentation Patents: Who Holds the Ground
- 70.6% concentration. The top 5 assignees hold 60 of all 85 records in scope — a field where a small group of filers has already staked most of the claim space.
- +150% filing growth. Filings rose from 2 in 2021 to 5 in 2024, the last year with complete publication data, pointing to renewed investment even as the leaderboard stays stable.
- H04L dominates at 91.8%. Digital information transmission claims touch nearly every record, while switching (H04Q) and general transmission (H04B) classes remain almost untouched.
85
Published Records
71%
Top-5 Share of All Records
+150%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
US
Leading Jurisdiction
Filing growth compares 2021 (2 records) with 2024 (5) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 85 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
Published byPatsnap Research··7 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Field Overview
What this landscape covers
Identity aware proxy and microsegmentation sits at the intersection of application-layer proxying, distributed firewalling and workload identity enforcement. The 85 records in scope, spanning 2015 to the 2026 data cut-off, capture how vendors have translated the zero trust principle — verify every flow, not just the perimeter — into claimable architecture: security group policy, flow-level enforcement, and encrypted traffic visibility at the segment level.
Filing activity peaked in 2019 at 7 records and has since fluctuated, with the most recent complete year (2024) showing renewed momentum. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025-2026 figures in the trend chart will continue to fill in and should not yet be read as a slowdown.
Filing activity by year, 2015-2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Identity Aware Proxy and Microsegmentation covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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Filing Data
Trend and technology composition
The dataset spans 85 published records across six receiving offices, with filing concentrated in H04L digital transmission claims and a long tail of adjacent classes.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings climbed from 0 in 2017 to a peak of 7 in 2019, dipped, then grew from 2 in 2021 to 5 in 2024 — a 150% increase over that three-year span. The United States leads receiving offices with 41 filings, followed by WIPO PCT filings at 11 and EPO and IL each at 8, indicating a filing strategy still centred on US priority with selective international extension.
Technology class distribution
H04L (digital information transmission) appears in 91.8% of the 85 records, confirming that most claims route through core transport and protocol mechanics rather than switching hardware. G06F and H04W each cover 35.3% of records, reflecting the split between general-purpose processing claims and wireless-network-specific implementations. H04Q and H04B remain marginal at 2.4% and 1.2% respectively — thin but not empty.
Shares are the percentage of the 85 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Identity Aware Proxy and Microsegmentation covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
Go deeper on Identity Aware Proxy and Microsegmentation with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about identity aware proxy and microsegmentation and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
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Representative and most-cited filings
Representative Filing
Systems and methods for enforcing secure network segmentation for sensitive workloads (US9300691B1)
CA, INC.
Identifies a sensitive workload deployed within a subnet of a segmented network, applies a security policy governing that deployment, and intercepts at a proxy any attempt to reconfigure the workload's placement within the segmented network — flagging attempts that would violate the applicable policy before they take effect.Filed by CA, INC., granted 2016-03-29 — an early example of proxy-mediated policy enforcement tied to workload placement rather than static network topology.
Most-cited records in this dataset
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20030126468A1 | Distributed firewall system and method | 421 |
| 2 | US20060009213A1 | Method and apparatus for providing mobile and other intermittent connectivity in a computing environment | 174 |
| 3 | US20170064749A1 | Associating Service Tags with Remote Data Message Flows Based on Remote Device Management Attributes | 162 |
| 4 | US10826775B1 | Policy plane integration across multiple domains | 139 |
| 5 | US20170295141A1 | Configuring firewalls for an industrial automation network | 123 |
| 6 | US20180131675A1 | Firewall rule creation in a virtualized computing environment | 87 |
| 7 | US20170063928A1 | Defining Network Rules Based on Remote Device Management Attributes | 86 |
| 8 | US7536715B2 | Distributed firewall system and method | 83 |
| 9 | US7778260B2 | Method and apparatus for providing mobile and other intermittent connectivity in a computing environment | 69 |
| 10 | US20200120022A1 | Methods and apparatus for use in providing transport and data center segmentation in a mobile network | 54 |
Citation counts favour older filings inside this corpus and should be read as a signal of influence on subsequent art, not as a measure of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Identity Aware Proxy and Microsegmentation covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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What the numbers mean for filing strategy
Three patterns stand out once family counts, classes and receiving offices are read together: concentration at the top, a technology base built on transport-layer claims, and international filing that trails the US by a wide margin.
Concentration
70.6%
of 85 records held by top 5 assignees
A small group already controls most of the claim space
With the top 5 assignees accounting for 70.6% of all 85 records and the top 10 reaching 87.1%, new entrants are filing into a field where broad architectural claims are largely already staked. The leader alone holds 25 records, more than six times the fifth-place assignee's count of 4.
Ranking covers 28 assignees, the full set returned for this dataset.
Growth signal
+150%
filing growth, 2021 to 2024
Renewed filing activity after a mid-cycle lull
Filings grew from 2 in 2021 to 5 in 2024, the most recent year with complete publication data. That growth sits below the 2019 peak of 7 but confirms the technology is still attracting fresh filing rather than settling into pure maintenance.
2025-2026 figures will rise as publication catches up.
Technology base
91.8%
of records classed under H04L
Claims cluster around transport and protocol mechanics
H04L's dominance means most enforcement logic is being claimed at the digital transmission layer rather than at switching hardware (H04Q, 2.4%) or general transmission (H04B, 1.2%). Those two classes remain thin, which is where hardware-adjacent enforcement claims could still be written without colliding with the bulk of prior art.
Class shares sum above 100% because records can carry multiple IPC codes.
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Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to identity aware proxy and microsegmentation, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Identity Aware Proxy and Microsegmentation covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Competitive Landscape
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The ranking spans 28 assignees on 85 records. The leader's count of 25 records dwarfs the tenth-place assignee's 2, and momentum among the most cited names has cooled to zero filings in the latest year across the board — a sign the field's early architecture is set and the next wave of claims will likely come from newer entrants.
Leader
25
records held by the top assignee
One filer's count exceeds the next four combined
The leading assignee's 25 records account for a large share of the top 5's combined 60, meaning the rest of the top tier is filing at a materially lower rate even while remaining active.
Top 5 combined: 60 of 85 records.
Mid-tier
4
records at fifth place
A sharp drop-off after the leader
Fifth place holds 4 records against the leader's 25 — a gap wide enough that mid-tier assignees compete more on specific implementation claims than on broad architecture.
Tenth place holds 2 records.
Momentum
0
latest-year filings across leading assignees
Established filers have gone quiet in the most recent year
Every one of the most-cited assignees shows zero filings in the latest year of this dataset. Given the 18-month publication lag, this likely reflects filings still in the pipeline rather than a genuine stop, but it does mean recent public activity is coming from names outside the historical top tier.
Read latest-year zeros with the publication lag in mind.
Recent-year filing momentum by assignee
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Nicira, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Cisco Technology, Inc. | 0 | — |
| VMware, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Secure Computing LLC | 0 | — |
| NETMOTION WIRELESS | 0 | — |
| McMaster University | 0 | — |
| MARKHAM THOMAS R | 0 | — |
| OPERANT AI INC | 0 | — |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on Identity Aware Proxy and Microsegmentation covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Next Steps
Where to take this analysis
The figures above establish scale and concentration. Turning that into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision means drilling into specific claims.
Map claim boundaries around the top assignees
The top 5 hold 70.6% of all records in scope; understanding exactly what those claims cover — not just how many they hold — is the difference between a blocked filing and an open one.
Explore assignee claims in EurekaCheck the thin classes before drafting
H04Q and H04B together cover a small fraction of records. That thinness may reflect genuine white space or simply that switching-layer enforcement is claimed elsewhere under different terms worth searching separately.
Run a class-level search in EurekaSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Identity Aware Proxy and Microsegmentation covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions on this landscape
The ranking covers 28 assignees across 85 records, and it is heavily front-loaded: the leading assignee alone holds 25 records, compared with 4 at fifth place and 2 at tenth. Together the top 5 assignees account for 70.6% of all 85 records in scope, and the top 10 reach 87.1%. That means most of the architectural ground in this field has already been claimed by a small number of filers, and later entrants tend to compete on narrower implementation details rather than broad system claims.
Filings grew from 2 in 2021 to 5 in 2024, a 150% increase, after an earlier peak of 7 in 2019. The 2024 figure is the most recent year with essentially complete publication data. Filings recorded for 2025 and 2026 will look lower simply because publication typically lags the actual filing date by around 18 months, so they should not be read as evidence of a slowdown.
H04L, the digital information transmission class, appears in 91.8% of the 85 records, making it by far the dominant technology base. G06F (general digital data processing) and H04W (wireless communication networks) each cover 35.3% of records, reflecting a split between platform-level and wireless-specific implementations. Switching and selecting (H04Q) and general transmission (H04B) are comparatively untouched, at 2.4% and 1.2% of records respectively.
US9300691B1 covers a method for enforcing network segmentation on sensitive workloads by intercepting, at a proxy, attempts to reconfigure a workload's deployment within a segmented subnet, and checking that reconfiguration against a security policy before allowing it. Anyone implementing proxy-mediated interception tied specifically to workload placement changes within a segmented network should review this claim closely. Alternatives that enforce policy at the flow level rather than at reconfiguration events, or that apply policy before deployment rather than intercepting changes after the fact, sit further from this claim's language.
The thinnest technology classes in this dataset are H04Q (switching and selecting) at 2.4% of records and H04B (general transmission) at 1.2%, both far below the 91.8% coverage of H04L. Encrypted traffic visibility and sub-flow segment granularity also appear only within the broader H04L claims rather than as dedicated architectural approaches, suggesting narrower claim language in those specific mechanisms may still be available. Any filing strategy here should still confirm thinness through a dedicated freedom-to-operate search, since low class counts in this corpus do not guarantee the underlying mechanism is unclaimed elsewhere.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Identity Aware Proxy and Microsegmentation covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company's registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.