• Air gaps offer one of the most effective ways for organizations to protect their critical systems and keep threats out of their sensitive networks.
• For highly regulated industries, air gaps safeguard data and simplify audits, helping organizations meet the strictest compliance standards with ease.
• By design, solutions that function offline and enforce a default-deny, Zero Trust deliver stronger protection, functionality, and visibility across isolated systems.  

The threat landscape keeps expanding as  sophisticated nation-state cyber actors sharpen their attacks and opportunistic cyber criminals exploit every vulnerability for financial gain.

Although some believe that adversarial state cyber actors primarily focus on U.S. Government and Defense agencies, they also target critical U.S. infrastructure, according to the Homeland Threat Assessment 2025. For instance:

• People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-sponsored cyber actors have pre-positioned cyber exploitation and attack capabilities targeting critical infrastructure—including the communications, energy, transportation, and water and wastewater sectors—in the Homeland and U.S. territories.
• Iranian government and other cyber actors sympathetic to Tehran’s interests continue to target U.S. critical infrastructure, among others, in retaliation for U.S. support to Israel during the Gaza conflict.
• Russian state-sponsored cyber actors actively seek  to improve their ability to execute stealthy cyber operations and identify new vulnerabilities they could leverage against a variety of critical infrastructure targets. 

Ransomware actors are highly motivated

Financially motivated cyber criminals and state-affiliated actors are employing ransomware and other malware to disrupt U.S. critical infrastructure and impose significant financial costs on their victims. In 2023—the most recent year of available data—ransomware actors attacked most U.S. critical infrastructure sectors to financially extort victims—with healthcare and public health (HPH), critical manufacturing, IT, financial services, and government services and facilities sectors among the most affected. 

• In late 2023, a ransomware attack on the IT network of a large national hospital provider caused disruptions to subsidiary healthcare providers in multiple states.
• Later in 2024, a ransomware attack against the United States’ largest payment exchange platform for prescription drugs led to nationwide disruptions to pharmacy and hospital services for at least two weeks and cost over $20 million in ransom payments.
• North Korean cyber actors almost certainly will continue to target U.S financial entities, including individuals, venture capital firms, exchanges, and especially cryptocurrency-related users and entities, to finance Pyongyang’s strategic priorities and weapons programs and reduce the impact of international sanctions. These actors have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency over the last several years.

Why use an air-gapped system?

Air gaps serve as one of cybersecurity’s most reliable defenses, protecting sensitive data by physically isolating a network or system from unsecured networks like the internet. This degree of separation safeguards industries that depend on data integrity and confidentiality, including defense, finance, healthcare, utilities, and manufacturing.

Consider how they’re applied:

• Military and defense systems use air gaps to secure classified information, so that highly sensitive operations and communications stay confidential and protected.
• Financial institutions implement air gaps as part of compliance standards to protect critical financial data and maintain operational integrity.
• In healthcare, air gaps help secure medical records and sensitive health data against breaches that could violate privacy laws like HIPAA and have personal implications for patients.
• Many industries, including utilities and manufacturing, use air gaps to secure operational technology (OT) that controls critical infrastructure. This isolation helps prevent catastrophic attacks that could result in physical damage to facilities or disruptions in essential services.

The benefits of air-gapped systems 

Adopting air-gapped systems to protect data benefits businesses immensely. The top advantages of using air gaps for enhanced data protection include:

• Increased threat mitigation: Air gaps offer security because they physically separate sensitive systems from unsecured networks, making unauthorized access virtually impossible without direct physical contact.
• Regulatory compliance: For industries under rigorous regulatory requirements regarding data security, air gaps help organizations comply with laws that mandate stringent measures to protect sensitive information.
• Audit compliance:  Air-gapped systems simplify compliance with auditing standards, providing clear, physical proof of proactive measures to secure data.
• Data integrity and control: Air gaps ensure that access to sensitive data is highly controlled and monitored. Since the system is physically isolated users must be physically present to access data, allowing businesses to implement strict access protocols and monitoring. Data tampering or leak risk is minimized with no direct internet connection. 

Challenges in implementing air-gapped systems

For many organizations—whether in the public sector or another highly regulated vertical—protecting endpoints and critical systems is not straightforward. While there is no shortage of cybersecurity solutions on the market, not many of them are equipped to deliver full protection in an isolated or air-gapped environment.

Organizations managing these types of environments may face many challenges, including:

• Limitations in budgets and resources to deploy and manage security tools
• Mission-critical and classified systems must operate without internet connectivity
• Requirements to align with industry mandates for continuous protection
• Coverage for diverse environments, often including legacy OSes
• Operational blind spots

The solution to air-gapped systems challenges

Symantec and Carbon Black provide organizations in the public sector and other highly regulated industries—including defense, finance, healthcare, utilities, and manufacturing—with endpoint security and application control for air-gapped systems. Our solutions deliver strong prevention, detection, and response capabilities while reducing operational overhead and easing compliance for organizations of every size and type.

Our trusted air-gapped endpoint defenses offer: 

• Robust endpoint protection to defend against increasingly sophisticated threats.
• Forensic-grade endpoint detection and response (EDR) to quickly identify and mitigate potential attacks.
• A positive security model enforced by comprehensive application control to protect critical systems.
• Data center hardening with complete server protection enabling visibility, compliance, hardening, and management.

With decades of experience protecting mission-critical networks and systems around the world, these solutions are uniquely positioned to provide the highest level of endpoint security to even the most sensitive and complex environments. While other solutions may dramatically pare down capabilities for their technologies within air-gapped deployments, Symantec and Carbon Black deliver feature-rich products designed from the ground-up to operate without internet connectivity. 

Ready to take control? Explore how Carbon Black App Control and Carbon Black EDR can strengthen your defenses—especially in air-gapped environments.