Understanding and Detecting Lateral Movement

This Arctic Wolf advisory explains lateral movement as a key enabler of ransomware and other cyber attacks: after initial access and persistence, attackers use techniques like RDP, WMI, PsExec, SSH, lateral tool transfer, internal spear phishing, and stolen tokens to move “east/west” within networks and expand access. The report emphasizes detection and prevention through real-time environment monitoring, behavior analysis, network segmentation, vulnerability management, zero trust, and 24×7 MDR services to reduce breakout time and limit impact.