Question

Difficulty: MediumSecure Network Design and Segmentation

A security architect is updating the enterprise security baseline for several subnets and workload environments. Match each network design requirement to the most appropriate architecture technique or isolation mechanism.

  • Completely detaching sensitive legacy industrial control devices from all physical and wireless network connectivityAir-gapping
  • Restricting lateral East-West traffic flow between virtual machine workloads operating on the same hypervisor hostMicrosegmentation
  • Placing publicly accessible web application servers in a network boundary separated from internal database serversDemilitarized Zone (DMZ)
  • Establishing a single, heavily monitored host through which system administrators must authenticate to access remote secure zonesJump box / Bastion host

Answer

Complete network detachment corresponds to Air-gapping; Restricting lateral virtual machine traffic corresponds to Microsegmentation; Separating public web servers from core databases corresponds to Demilitarized Zone (DMZ); Enforcing a single monitored administrative gateway corresponds to Jump box / Bastion host.
Air-gapping ensures absolute isolation from external networks; microsegmentation applies workload-level traffic filtering to limit lateral movement within subnets; a DMZ segregates public-facing resources from internal networks; and a jump box serves as a secured gateway for privileged administrative sessions.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Evaluate requirement 1 (legacy device isolation without connectivity)
Identified absolute physical/logical separation requirement
Disconnecting systems entirely from networks defines an air gap topology.
2
Evaluate requirement 2 (lateral East-West traffic control between workloads on the same host)
Identified fine-grained workload-level policy enforcement
Controlling communication between individual container/VM workloads on shared subnets is achieved using microsegmentation.
3
Evaluate requirement 3 (isolating internet-exposed services from private networks)
Identified perimeter network isolation pattern
Exposing services to external traffic while keeping internal networks protected behind firewall interfaces defines a DMZ.
4
Evaluate requirement 4 (centralized administrative management entry point)
Identified single-purpose proxy server requirement
Requiring admins to connect through a single secure proxy before reaching target systems describes a jump box.

Key Concept

Network Segmentation Archetypes and Traffic Isolation Controls
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