Lateral movement refers to the techniques that cyber attackers, or

threat actor In cybersecurity, a threat actor, bad actor or malicious actor is either a person or a group of people that take part in Malice (law), malicious acts in the cyber realm including: computers, devices, systems, or Computer network, networks. Threat ...

s, use to progressively move through a

network Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

as they search for the key data and assets that are ultimately the target of their attack campaigns.Lateral Movement: When Cyber Attacks Go Sideways
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/ref> While the development of more sophisticated sequences of attack has helped threat actors develop better strategies and evade detection as compared to the past, similar to planning a heist, cyber defenders have also learned to use lateral movement against attackers in that they use it to detect their location and respond more effectively to an attack. Lateral movement is a part of the

ATT&CK The Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Common Knowledge or MITRE ATT&CK is a guideline for classifying and describing cyberattacks and intrusions. It was created by the Mitre Corporation and released in 2013. Rather than looking at the results o ...

framework within the 14 categories of Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures.

References

Cybercrime {{security-stub