Understanding and Detecting Lateral Movement

This report describes lateral movement as a critical phase in ransomware and other cyber attacks, enumerating common techniques (RDP, WMI, PsExec, SSH, lateral tool transfer, internal spear‑phishing, stolen tokens) and emphasizing why east/west activity is often harder to detect; it also outlines preventative measures including real‑time monitoring (MDR), behavior analysis, network segmentation, vulnerability management, and zero‑trust controls.