East-West traffic is the lateral movement of data packets between servers within a data center, or across private and public clouds1. This type of traffic has grown substantially with the proliferation of data centers and cloud adoption, and it now surpasses the conventional North-South traffic that goes in or out of the network2. Therefore, it is important to protect East-West traffic from potential malicious actors and breaches, as threats can arise internally and move laterally without ever touching the traditional network perimeter12. By inspecting and monitoring all East-West traffic, organizations can effectively block the lateral movement of threat actors, increase network visibility, protect vital applications and data, and lower costs and risks for distributed operations23. Reference:
East-West Traffic: Everything You Need to Know | Gigamon Blog
What is East-West Security? | VMware Glossary
How to Harness East-West Visibility for a Stronger Defensive Security ...