Failure Pattern
Legacy firewalls focus on perimeter security and have minimal visibility into workload identity. Attackers exploit the internal network where trust is assumed.
What We See in the Field
A compromised server moves laterally inside the network without resistance. Internal traffic is trusted because it appears to originate from known IP ranges.
Underlying Causes
Perimeter-based trust
Flat internal networks
Metadata-based identity
Lack of workload validation
Encrypted east-west traffic hiding malicious behavior
Trust-Native Network Resolution
DTL verifies identity for all internal traffic. East-west communications require trusted sessions tied to workload identity, containing compromise.
Broken Trust Assumption
This failure pattern has played out repeatedly in real security incidents—not because of missing tools, but because of how trust is assigned.
In breaches such as SolarWinds, Capital One, Okta, and MOVEit, attackers did not bypass security controls. They operated through them, using valid identities, trusted credentials, signed code, and encrypted sessions. Security systems accepted these signals as proof of legitimacy, allowing malicious behavior to proceed.
The common thread across these incidents is structural: identity was assumed based on trust signals, not proven at the moment of execution.