The Perimeter Behind the Perimeter

Fragmented perimeters, phantom segments, and funding the edges nobody drew on the 2019 diagram.

The tidy castle-and-moat diagram died quietly: today there are perimeters in the cloud account, the branch closet, the vendor VPN, the home office, and that one lab nobody admits to funding.

Where fragments hide

• Site-to-site tunnels installed during a project, alive since
• Queryable-with-credentials dashboards on forgotten servers
• Vendor support accounts with standing access and a password rotation policy of folklore
• The "temporary" remote-access box from a work season that ended

Reperimeterize, on purpose

Identity as the gate; the network as the fence behind the gate. Map the segments that matter, give each an owner and a ping, then measure how often they matter pages-on audit: it's usually fewer segments — and harder skins — than the originals.

The castle diagram was always a simplified map of a city. Draw the city on purpose .. or defend the one you actually have: these days that means the map before the mood.