What is lateral movement?
Lateral movement is the set of techniques attackers use to move through a network after gaining an initial foothold. Rather than attacking their ultimate target directly, they compromise something less protected, a laptop, a mailbox, and work their way toward the systems and data they actually want.
It's the difference between a break-in at the front door and an intruder who can then wander freely through every room.
How attackers move
Once inside, attackers harvest credentials, exploit excessive permissions and abuse legitimate tools to blend in. Weak internal segmentation lets them reach servers and shares they should never be able to touch.
Because they often use valid accounts, this activity can look like normal business, which is why it so often goes undetected for weeks.
How to stop it
Slowing and detecting lateral movement is about defence in depth:
- Multi-factor authentication on every account
- Least-privilege access, so users and apps only have what they need
- Network segmentation to contain an intruder
- Endpoint detection and response to spot suspicious behaviour
- Continuous monitoring so anomalies are caught early
Why it matters for SMEs
Lateral movement isn't just an enterprise problem. Small businesses are targeted precisely because their internal controls are often weaker. The good news is that the same fundamentals, MFA, least privilege, segmentation and monitoring, are achievable for any business with the right partner.
Spotting lateral movement in practice needs correlated logs and someone watching them, which is what our managed SIEM and SOC service provides.
