How does East-West Traffic Control Identify Traffic Threats?

East-West Traffic Control identifies traffic threats by monitoring and analyzing internal network communications between servers, applications, or virtual machines within a data center or cloud environment. Unlike North-South traffic (external inbound/outbound), East-West traffic flows laterally, making it harder to detect anomalies using traditional perimeter-based security tools.

Key methods for threat identification include:

1. Behavioral Analysis: Establishing baselines for normal traffic patterns and flagging deviations, such as unusual data volumes or access frequencies.
2. Micro-Segmentation: Dividing the network into smaller zones to limit lateral movement and detect unauthorized cross-zone communications.
3. Encryption Inspection: Decrypting and inspecting encrypted traffic (e.g., TLS) to uncover malicious payloads hidden within secure connections.
4. Threat Intelligence Integration: Cross-referencing traffic signatures with known attack patterns or indicators of compromise (IOCs).

Example: In a cloud environment, if a compromised container suddenly starts sending large amounts of data to another internal service outside its normal communication scope, East-West Traffic Control can flag this as a potential data exfiltration attempt.

For such scenarios, Tencent Cloud offers services like Tencent Cloud Network Security (TCNS) and Tencent Cloud Host Security, which provide advanced East-West traffic monitoring, micro-segmentation, and threat detection capabilities tailored for hybrid and multi-cloud architectures.