Segmentation Taxonomy Management

The Taxonomy is a central mechanism for defining and managing segmentation policies in Horizon. In order to create segmentation policies that are appropriate for your network, familiarity with this system is necessary. This guide will introduce the built-in segmentation taxonomy and provide instructions for navigating it and extending it with new terms.

The LECA Segmentation Taxonomy

The LECA (Location, Environment, Component, Location) Segmentation Taxonomy is included out-of-the-box and is meant to be used when defining segmentation policies. To view this taxonomy, navigate to Management > Taxonomy, and click the expand arrow on the right side of the LECA Segmentation row of the Taxonomy table.

Here, you can see all of the terms that belong to this taxonomy organized in a hierarchy. Some of these terms on the higher levels are used simply to organize other terms, and the bottom level terms without children are used to tag network assets according to their attributes. These tags allow segmentation policies to dynamically identify groups of assets based on logical characteristics rather than static properties such as hostnames or IP addresses.

Extending the Taxonomy

This taxonomy is simply meant to serve as a foundation for creating segments on your network, but it should be extended with custom terms to improve its usefulness. For instance, the Location and Application categories depend entirely on where your network assets are located geographically and to which applications they belong. To edit specific terms or add new ones, you must navigate through the taxonomy layer by layer. To do this, first click on the Terms button to view the top level of the hierarchy. From here, any term can be clicked to view its children.

At any level of the taxonomy, a new term can be added by clicking the Add button. This will bring you to the Add Term page. Provide a name and description for the new term, and check "Could be Selected" if this term will be used to tag assets rather than organize other terms. Optionally, specify any synonyms that should behave equivalently to this term. Finally, click Save to finish adding this new term.