Security in Action – Top Use-Cases with Nile NaaS

Nile’s mission is to be the “easy button” for network and security in on-premises deployments. The company was founded by networking industry veterans, including former Cisco executives John Chambers and Pankaj Patel, to address the complexity of enterprise LAN environments. Nile has pioneered a new architectural approach, backed by numerous patents, that has led to its recognition as a Visionary in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure. The Nile service is deployed globally across various verticals, powering large-scale environments such as a 12 million square-foot warehouse and concurrently supporting over 200,000 users.

Shiv Mehra detailed Nile’s Zero Trust fabric, designed to counter common attack paths by securing the infrastructure, controlling network access, and governing post-access activity. The infrastructure itself is hardened by design; Nile hardware has no direct management interfaces like SSH or Telnet, and all communications between fabric components are mutually authenticated and encrypted with MACsec. Access control operates on a “deny by default” principle where physical ports are “colorless,” meaning access is determined solely by identity, not port configuration. Nile makes identity verification a cornerstone, supporting seamless wired and wireless SSO integrated with IdPs, traditional 802.1X/RADIUS, and a robust system for IoT devices that combines continuous fingerprinting with optional device validation to ensure proper identification and segmentation.

This identity-first approach enables a “segment of one,” where every user and device is isolated by default, preventing lateral movement and network reconnaissance as demonstrated in a live demo. The policy engine, called the Trust Service, enforces granular, least-privilege access by requiring every entity to belong to a group (user, device, or application). Policies are then built by defining rules between these groups, enhanced with contextual attributes like device compliance status from an MDM or EDR. A final demo showcased the ease of this model by creating a policy in a few clicks to allow only a specific video streaming protocol between employees, while all other inter-employee traffic, including pings, remained blocked, illustrating how Nile simplifies the implementation of true microsegmentation.