Lateral Movement Risk Risk Guides
Comprehensive DSPM guides for identifying and mitigating lateral movement risk risks across your data infrastructure.
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About Lateral Movement Risk
Lateral movement refers to techniques that adversaries use to move through a network or cloud environment after gaining initial access. Attackers exploit trust relationships, shared credentials, and network connectivity to access additional systems and data beyond their initial entry point. This progression allows attackers to escalate privileges, discover sensitive data, and establish persistent access across the infrastructure.
Common Lateral Movement Techniques
- Credential harvesting and password reuse
- Service account and shared credential abuse
- Network protocol exploitation and tunneling
- Cloud service cross-resource access
Attack Progression Indicators
- Unusual cross-system authentication patterns
- Privilege escalation and permission changes
- Network reconnaissance and port scanning
- Data access from non-standard locations
Risk Amplification Factors
- Flat network architectures without segmentation
- Excessive trust relationships and permissions
- Poor credential management and rotation
- Lack of visibility into east-west traffic
Network Segmentation and Isolation
Effective network segmentation limits an attacker's ability to move laterally by creating security boundaries and controlling communication paths between systems.
Micro-Segmentation
- Implement software-defined perimeters
- Create granular security zones and enclaves
- Deploy application-aware network policies
- Use identity-based network access controls
Cloud Network Security
- Configure virtual private clouds (VPCs) and subnets
- Implement security groups and network ACLs
- Deploy cloud-native firewalls and gateways
- Enable VPC flow logs and network monitoring
Zero Trust Networking
- Eliminate implicit trust between network zones
- Implement continuous verification and validation
- Deploy software-defined perimeter solutions
- Enable encrypted communication channels
Credential and Identity Management
Robust credential and identity management prevents attackers from leveraging compromised accounts to move laterally through the environment.
Credential Security
- Implement strong password policies and MFA
- Regular credential rotation and lifecycle management
- Eliminate shared and service account passwords
- Deploy privileged access management (PAM) solutions
Identity Governance
- Least privilege access principle enforcement
- Just-in-time (JIT) access provisioning
- Regular access reviews and recertification
- Automated identity lifecycle management
Trust Relationship Management
- Minimize cross-domain and cross-system trusts
- Implement delegation controls and constraints
- Monitor and audit trust relationship usage
- Regular review of federated identity configurations
Detection and Monitoring Strategies
Early detection of lateral movement attempts is critical for containing attacks and preventing widespread compromise.
Behavioral Analytics
- User and entity behavior analytics (UEBA)
- Machine learning-based anomaly detection
- Baseline establishment and deviation analysis
- Risk scoring and threat hunting workflows
Network Monitoring
- East-west traffic inspection and analysis
- Network protocol anomaly detection
- Endpoint detection and response (EDR) integration
- Network security monitoring (NSM) deployment
Threat Intelligence Integration
- Indicators of compromise (IoC) monitoring
- Tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) detection
- MITRE ATT&CK framework mapping
- Threat hunting and proactive investigation