Discover how simulating lateral movement with attack path analysis helps security teams identify and neutralize potential routes to crown jewel systems before attackers can exploit them.
Most breaches don't happen because attackers kicked down the front door — they happen because once inside, attackers quietly moved from system to system until they reached something critical. This post breaks down what lateral movement looks like in practice, why simulating it before an attacker does is a game-changer, and how attack path analysis gives security teams a clear map of exactly which routes lead straight to your crown jewels.
The security team at a major financial firm thought they had everything covered. Their vulnerability scans came back clean. Their endpoints were protected. Then an attacker slipped in through a forgotten dev server and, over the course of three weeks, quietly moved across their network until reaching the customer database. By the time anyone noticed, it was too late.
Lateral movement is what happens after the initial breach. It's the technique attackers use to progressively move through a network, jumping from system to system while gathering privileges and expanding access. Think of it as the difference between someone breaking into your house versus someone breaking in, finding your car keys, discovering where you keep important documents, and then accessing your bank account.
Attackers use various tactics to move laterally:
What makes lateral movement particularly dangerous is how normal it looks. According to IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report, the average breach has a dwell time of 277 days, that's attackers moving through networks undetected for over nine months, using legitimate credentials and admin tools to blend right in.
Crown jewel systems are the assets in your environment that would cause maximum damage if compromised.
These typically include:
Attackers don't just randomly bounce around your network. They're mapping your environment, looking for stepping stones toward these high-value targets.
Common choke points that enable lateral movement include:
The problem? Most security approaches are siloed. Your vulnerability scanner finds CVEs but doesn't understand how they chain together. Your IAM tools track permissions but don't see network paths. Your EDR sees endpoint behavior but not cloud misconfigurations.
You can't defend a path you can't see. That's why simulating lateral movement flips the script on attackers.
Lateral movement simulation recreates how attackers would move through your environment in a controlled way. Instead of waiting for someone to exploit chains of weaknesses, you identify and fix those chains proactively. It's like testing all the locks, windows, and doors in your house before a burglar has a chance to check them.
Security teams that simulate lateral movement see several benefits:
While red teams have traditionally handled this type of testing, Secure.com's Digital Security Teammate provides automated attack path analysis that makes continuous simulation possible at scale. Even lean teams can run these simulations without diverting resources from other security priorities.
The key insight here? Finding and fixing a single chokepoint that breaks multiple attack paths delivers exponentially more value than patching individual vulnerabilities with no context.
Attack path analysis automatically traces how an attacker could chain vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and permissions to reach critical systems. It's the GPS of your security program, showing you not just where problems exist, but exactly how they connect to form exploitable routes.
Let's walk through a realistic attack path:
Traditional tools would see these as five separate issues of varying severity. Attack path analysis shows you they're actually a single exploit chain leading straight to your crown jewels.
The concept of blast radius is equally important.
Where attack path analysis really shines is in "what-if" remediation planning. By simulating fixes, you can see how revising one IAM role might collapse multiple attack paths at once, dramatically reducing your blast radius without requiring dozens of patches.
Visibility without action is just an expensive worry. The real value of attack path analysis comes when you transform that intelligence into targeted remediation.
This means shifting your security team from a reactive posture (chasing individual vulnerabilities based on CVSS scores) to a strategic approach that asks: "Which fixes will collapse the most critical attack paths?"
Effective remediation workflows include:
Remember that attack paths aren't static. New assets, vulnerabilities, code deployments, and cloud resources create new paths constantly. What was secure yesterday might be an open path today.
Knowing a path exists isn't enough, you need to act on it fast. Secure.com's Digital Security Teammates go beyond mapping to actively help teams close exploitable routes before attackers use them:
Lateral movement refers to moving across systems within a network. Privilege escalation is about gaining higher-level permissions on a single system. Attackers typically use both together — gaining higher privileges on one machine to access another, then moving laterally to that new system.
Not necessarily. While red teams are valuable for hands-on testing, modern attack path analysis platforms can automate much of this process continuously. This makes lateral movement simulation accessible to teams without dedicated red team resources.
Crown jewels are assets whose compromise would cause the most operational, financial, or reputational damage. Typically, these include critical databases, payment infrastructure, customer records, or core business systems. If losing it would make the front page of the news, it's probably a crown jewel.
Continuously. Every new asset, vulnerability, or configuration change can open new paths. Static, periodic assessments aren't enough for modern environments that change daily or hourly. Automated, continuous monitoring is the only realistic approach.
Attackers don't announce themselves when they start moving through your network. They use the same trust relationships, the same credentials, and the same misconfigurations your team overlooked — and they move quietly until they reach something that matters.
Simulating lateral movement before they do isn't just a best practice; it's the only way to know whether your defenses actually hold up when it counts. With attack path analysis, security teams can see exactly what an attacker sees, prioritize the paths that lead to crown jewels, and close them before anyone gets there.
The breaches that make headlines usually don't start with dramatic front-door attacks. They start with a single compromised system, followed by patient, methodical lateral movement. The question isn't whether attackers will try these techniques — it's whether you'll find and fix the paths before they do.
With breaches averaging $4.88M and tool sprawl creating blind spots, this guide breaks down the four essential security tool categories every CISO needs to reduce risk, cut costs, and build a connected, high-impact stack.
While vulnerability scanning tells you what's broken, attack path modeling reveals what's actually dangerous by showing how attackers could chain exploits to reach your crown jewels.
SOAR, MSSP, and AI-native Digital Security Teammates offer different approaches to cybersecurity operations—automation, managed services, and augmented intelligent security.