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Global Accelerated Learning • Est. 1999
Glossary Term East-West Traffic

Training Camp • Cybersecurity Glossary

What is East-West Traffic?

East-west traffic is lateral data flow between internal workloads, secured with microsegmentation and zero trust to limit attacker lateral movement.

Glossary > Zero Trust & Security Architecture > East-West Traffic

Understanding East-West Traffic

East-west traffic refers to the lateral flow of data between servers, services, and workloads within a data center, cloud environment, or internal network. It contrasts with north-south traffic, which crosses the network perimeter as it enters or leaves the environment. Because east-west traffic often bypasses perimeter defenses, securing it through microsegmentation and zero trust controls is critical to limiting an attacker's lateral movement.

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