What component of network security isolates segments of traffic to reduce risk?

A VLAN (Virtual Local Area Network) is designed to isolate and manage network traffic by creating distinct broadcast domains within a physical network. This segmentation helps in enhancing security by controlling which devices can communicate with each other. By grouping devices based on their function or role rather than their physical location, VLANs limit the exposure of sensitive information and reduce the potential attack surface.

For example, if you have different departments within an organization, you can create separate VLANs for each department, ensuring that traffic from one department is isolated from another. This isolation can mitigate risks associated with unauthorized access and broadcast traffic, as devices within one VLAN cannot easily communicate with devices in another VLAN unless explicitly routed to do so.

In contrast, while a firewall can filter traffic and enforce security policies, it does not inherently segment networks in the same way VLANs do. A router primarily focuses on directing traffic between different networks rather than isolating segments. Lastly, a proxy server acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers, which does not directly achieve the same level of traffic segmentation as VLANs.