Relay infrastructure becomes preferable when endpoint discovery fails, ports cannot be opened, or public cloud controls prevent stable peer-to-peer routing. In those cases, a managed relay path can deliver more reliable connectivity and easier operations than repeated NAT traversal failures. Teams should choose it when availability and predictable path selection matter more than a purely direct route.
Why This Matters for Security Teams
Restrictive cloud environments often turn “simple” east-west connectivity into an identity and policy problem, not just a networking problem. When security groups, private endpoints, NAT limits, or segmented tenant boundaries block direct paths, teams can spend hours tuning routes that still fail under scale or fail open in ways that are harder to govern. That is why relay infrastructure becomes a practical control choice: it can restore predictable reachability while keeping the exposure surface smaller than unmanaged direct peering.
This matters because access path design now affects both uptime and trust. NHI security work increasingly shows that organisations struggle with consistent access across hybrid and multi-cloud estates, and the 2024 Non-Human Identity Security Report found that 35.6% of organisations cite that challenge as their top NHI security issue. In parallel, the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 pushes teams toward governed, resilient connectivity rather than ad hoc exceptions.
In practice, many security teams discover the need for relays only after repeated NAT traversal failures or brittle exception handling has already disrupted production traffic.
How It Works in Practice
A relay is preferable when the environment makes direct connections unreliable, difficult to discover, or impossible to authorise cleanly. In cloud terms, that usually means the client can initiate outbound traffic, but inbound reachability is blocked by design. The relay becomes a controlled rendezvous point that both sides can reach, reducing dependency on stable public IPs, open listener ports, or fragile peer-to-peer path discovery.
Good implementations treat the relay as a governed connectivity layer, not a shortcut around security. That means authenticating both endpoints, enforcing policy at connection time, and limiting what traverses the path. When the architecture is strong, the relay supports operational outcomes such as:
- stable path selection across dynamic cloud networks
- reduced dependence on static firewall openings
- clearer audit points for who connected, when, and to what
- better fit for workloads that move across accounts, clusters, or VPCs
This is also where identity matters. For NHI traffic, the question is not only whether a path exists, but whether the workload on each end can prove what it is and what it is allowed to do. Guidance in the 2024 Non-Human Identity Security Report aligns with a broader trend toward dynamic, ephemeral access rather than long-lived secrets. That is consistent with modern security guidance in the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0, which emphasises managed and monitored control points.
In environments with strict outbound controls, shared DNS constraints, or heavy service-mesh overlays, relay-based connectivity often outperforms direct routing because the direct path cannot be made consistently reachable without weakening the surrounding policy boundary.
Common Variations and Edge Cases
Tighter connectivity control often improves governance, but it also increases operational overhead, so organisations have to balance path assurance against latency, cost, and failure handling. There is no universal standard for whether relay should be the default or the fallback; current guidance suggests choosing it when control-plane stability matters more than minimising hops.
Some environments still justify direct connections, especially when private routing is already reliable and the workload set is small. Others should prefer relays because direct connectivity would force broad exceptions, awkward cross-account peering, or repeated manual openings that do not scale. This tradeoff is especially sharp in multi-cloud and regulated environments, where the same control that blocks direct peering can also make unmanaged exceptions dangerous. The NHIMG research on hybrid and multi-cloud access complexity shows why teams move toward simpler, centrally governed access paths rather than one-off network workarounds.
Edge cases also arise when teams confuse relay with trust delegation. A relay can improve reachability, but it does not replace workload identity, short-lived credentials, or authorisation checks. Where those controls are weak, the relay can simply become a more reliable way to move bad access around. In cloud estates with high automation, that risk is often visible in incidents like the 230M AWS environment compromise and the Snowflake breach, where access scope and credential handling mattered as much as network reachability.
Standards & Framework Alignment
This section maps relevant standards and security frameworks to the operational risks and controls described in this guidance.
OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10, OWASP Agentic AI Top 10 and CSA MAESTRO address the attack and risk surface, while NIST CSF 2.0 and NIST Zero Trust (SP 800-207) set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-02 | Relay choices must still enforce strong NHI authentication and least privilege. |
| OWASP Agentic AI Top 10 | A-03 | Autonomous workloads need runtime authorisation even when traffic uses a relay. |
| CSA MAESTRO | M1 | MAESTRO stresses governed agent connectivity and execution boundaries. |
| NIST CSF 2.0 | PR.AC-1 | Identity-based access control is central when network paths are constrained. |
| NIST Zero Trust (SP 800-207) | 3.2 | Zero trust supports brokered access when direct connectivity is impractical. |
Use relays as controlled execution paths with identity checks, logging, and policy enforcement.
