Topic starter
24/10/2026 8:51 pm
TL;DR: East-west traffic now carries much of the risk in cloud-native, IoT, OT, and IoMT environments because attackers can move laterally inside networks while perimeter tools miss internal flows, according to Asimily. The governing problem is not traffic volume alone but the lack of visibility and enforced segmentation across complex internal paths.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Asimily: “East-West Cyberattacks and How They Work”.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when organisations do not segment east-west traffic?
A: When east-west traffic is not segmented, a single compromise can spread across workloads, applications, and devices much more easily.
Q: Why does east-west traffic increase breach impact in IoT and OT environments?
A: IoT and OT devices often lack agents, patch flexibility, and strong native controls, so internal access can persist without much resistance.
Q: What are the signs that internal traffic monitoring is failing?
A: Warning signs include incomplete device inventories, unknown internal flows, encrypted traffic that cannot be classified, and segmentation policies that do not match real communication patterns.
Practitioner guidance
- Map east-west communication paths first Build an inventory of which devices, services, and workloads exchange internal traffic, then identify the paths that should not exist for each segment.
- Segment by device class and trust zone Separate IoT, OT, IoMT, and IT assets into distinct zones so one compromised device cannot freely reach unrelated systems.
- Use passive discovery for unmanaged devices Rely on passive and protocol-based discovery where agents are not practical, especially for OT and medical devices that cannot tolerate disruption.
Bottom line: East-west traffic turns internal trust into a security boundary that attackers can exploit once they gain a foothold.
Explore further
View Full Forum → | NHI Foundation Course → | Our Services → | Read the full analysis →