Zero Trust Creates Blind Spots—Here’s How to Regain Visibility
- By Heidi Gabrielson
- 22-Sep-2025
Zero Trust has quickly become the gold standard for security. In fact, 81% of organizations have fully or partially implemented a Zero Trust model, while the remaining 19% are planning to (ZeroThreats Survey, August 2025).
By enforcing continuous verification of every user, device, and app, organizations close the door on implicit trust and lateral movement. But there’s a trade-off: the same controls that strengthen security often cripple network visibility.
IT teams are finding that the more they embrace ZTNA, the harder it becomes to see what’s happening inside their own networks. When connections are tunneled, segmented, and encrypted end to end, monitoring tools designed for open security perimeters no longer deliver the answers IT needs.
Visibility in a Zero Trust World
Network observability solutions must evolve to keep pace with ZTNA. Modern Zero Trust visibility requires:
- Identity-centric monitoring to understand traffic in terms of the user and device initiating it.
- End-to-end coverage from /endpoint to SaaS, across VPNs and ZTNA tunnels.
- Encryption-friendly insights such as visibility from the endpoint, not by decrypting payloads.
- AI-driven automation for cross-domain analysis that reduces noise and speeds resolution.
In other words, monitoring needs to shift closer to where traffic begins and ends, not just what happens in transit.
Riverbed NPM+: Built for Zero Trust Visibility
Riverbed NPM+ was designed to close the visibility gaps that Zero Trust creates. By capturing network data at client and server endpoints—before traffic is encrypted or hidden—NPM+ gives NetOps teams back the answers they need.
With Riverbed NPM+, organizations can:
- See what users experience – Endpoint intelligence exposes usernames, processes, and applications behind every connection, including for remote users.
- Spot issues without decryption – Metadata analysis identifies latency, jitter, or policy violations in real time.
- Follow every application path – Monitor traffic across SaaS, cloud, and private apps with end-to-end visibility.
- Accelerate resolution with AI – Integration with Riverbed IQ correlates anomalies and automates workflows, cutting MTTD and MTTR.
By leveraging these capabilities, NPM+ gives IT teams clear visibility into the problems Zero Trust often hides—from gateways becoming bottlenecks to encrypted tunnels obscuring issues and more. With actionable insights that keep user experience front and center, NPM+ helps Network Operations teams:
- Pinpoint underperforming gateways – Identify bottlenecks, latency, or congestion at Zero Trust enforcement points.
- See inside encrypted tunnels – Monitor tunnel health and performance without breaking encryption.
- Restore cloud and SaaS visibility – Track traffic paths beyond the data center to detect slowdowns across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
Instead of working against Zero Trust, NPM+ works with it—delivering visibility and assurance without compromising security.
The Path Forward
Zero Trust is here to stay. The real question is whether your monitoring strategy can keep up. Legacy tools built for flat, open networks leave IT without the visibility to support a modern, encrypted enterprise.
With Riverbed NPM+, you can regain end-to-end observability across every tunnel, connection, and application, ensuring Zero Trust security doesn’t come at the expense of user experience.
Discover how Riverbed NPM+ keeps your Zero Trust strategy visible and reliable, read the solution brief.