How to understand and avoid Advanced Persistent Threats

### Executive summary This article is an introductory primer on Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), defining the components of an APT (Advanced, Persistent, Threat), describing attacker techniques and persistence tactics such as zero-day exploitation, phishing, LOLBins and multi-stage access, and offering practical defensive measures including multi-factor authentication, strong unique passwords, timely patching, and up-to-date anti-malware.