What Is Lateral Movement in Cybersecurity?

Once an attacker gets inside your network, the breach itself is just the beginning. What happens next — lateral movement — is often where the real damage starts. Lateral movement in cybersecurity describes how attackers move through a network after initial compromise, hopping between systems to find sensitive data, escalate privileges, and expand their control.

Keep reading to learn how lateral movement works, why it’s so dangerous, and what your team can do to detect and stop it.

Lateral Movement Meaning in Cybersecurity

Why Is Lateral Movement So Dangerous?

How Does Lateral Movement Work?

Common Lateral Movement Techniques

How to Detect Lateral Movement

How to Prevent Lateral Movement

Lateral Movement in Cloud and Hybrid Environments

Wrapping Up: Understanding Lateral Movement in Cybersecurity

Frequently Asked Questions

Key Takeaways

Lateral movement lets attackers turn a single compromised endpoint into network-wide access by moving between systems undetected

Attackers rely on stolen credentials, privilege escalation, and remote access tools to spread across environments

Detecting lateral movement requires deep network visibility into East-West traffic, authentication behavior, and identity signals

Prevention of lateral movement depends on enforcing least privilege, adopting Zero Trust, and eliminating blind spots in encrypted traffic

Lateral Movement Meaning in Cybersecurity

The lateral movement meaning in cybersecurity is simple: It’s the technique attackers use to move from one compromised system to other systems within a network to expand access and reach high-value assets. Rather than attacking from the outside repeatedly, the attacker is already inside, moving quietly from machine to machine.

Here’s what that typically involves:

Internal network movement: Attackers pivot between hosts, servers, and workloads to map out the environment and find targets worth pursuing

Privilege escalation: Once inside, attackers work to gain higher-level permissions so they can access restricted systems and data

Credential abuse: Stolen usernames, passwords, and authentication tokens are the primary fuel for lateral movement, letting attackers impersonate legitimate users

Persistence: Attackers establish multiple footholds across the network so they can maintain access even if one entry point gets shut down

Why Is Lateral Movement So Dangerous?

A single compromised endpoint might seem manageable. But when attackers move laterally, the scope of the breach grows fast. Here’s why lateral movement security should be a top concern for every organization:

Expands Initial Breach Impact

What starts as one phished employee or one exploited vulnerability can quickly become a network-wide problem. Lateral movement allows attackers to reach file servers, databases, and domain controllers that hold far more value than the original point of entry.

Enables Data Exfiltration

The longer an attacker moves undetected, the more data they can collect. Lateral movement gives them time and access to locate sensitive records, intellectual property, and customer information before extracting it from the network.

Increases Ransomware Blast Radius

Ransomware operators don’t just encrypt one machine. They use lateral movement to spread across as many systems as possible before detonating their payload.

Helps Attackers Evade Detection

Because lateral movement often uses legitimate credentials and built-in tools, it blends in with normal network activity. Without the right monitoring in place, these movements can go unnoticed for weeks or months.

How Does Lateral Movement Work?

Lateral movement follows a general pattern, though the specifics vary by attacker and environment. Here’s how the typical sequence unfolds:

Initial Compromise

Every lateral movement campaign starts with a foothold. Attackers gain entry through phishing emails, exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities, or using stolen credentials purchased on the dark web.

Credential Harvesting

Once inside, attackers extract credentials from memory, configuration files, or cached tokens on the compromised system. These stolen credentials become the foundation for deeper access.

Privilege Escalation

With harvested credentials, attackers work to elevate their access. They target admin accounts, service accounts, and domain controllers to gain the permissions needed to move freely through the network.

Internal Reconnaissance

Before moving, attackers map the environment. They scan for active hosts, identify network segments, and locate high-value systems like databases and backup servers.

Remote Access Techniques

Attackers use legitimate remote access protocols, like RDP, SSH, and SMB, to move between systems. Because these are normal network tools, the activity often doesn’t trigger alerts.

Common Lateral Movement Techniques

Attackers have a range of methods for moving through a network. Many of these align with adversary behaviors documented in the MITRE ATT&CK framework, which maps common attacker tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used in real-world intrusions. MITRE also emphasizes the importance of network visibility in detecting these lateral movement techniques as attackers traverse environments.

Here are some of the most common lateral movement methods observed in attacks:

Pass-the-Hash: Attackers use stolen password hashes to authenticate without knowing the actual password. This works because many systems accept hash-based authentication.

Pass-the-Ticket: Similar to Pass-the-Hash but targets Kerberos authentication tokens, allowing attackers to impersonate users across Active Directory environments.

Credential dumping: Attackers extract stored credentials from system memory, registries, or security databases using tools designed for this purpose.

Remote service creation: Attackers create or modify services on remote machines to execute code, often using built-in Windows administration tools.

SMB abuse: The Server Message Block protocol is frequently exploited to transfer files and execute commands across networked Windows systems.

RDP pivoting: Remote Desktop Protocol connections let attackers interact directly with remote systems, often chaining multiple RDP sessions to move deeper into the network.

SSH hijacking: On Linux and cloud environments, attackers hijack existing SSH sessions or use stolen SSH keys to move between servers.

How to Detect Lateral Movement

Detecting lateral movement is difficult because attackers deliberately mimic normal user behavior. These detection strategies are where organizations should focus:

Monitor East-West Traffic

Most security tools focus on North-South traffic — data entering and leaving the network. But lateral movement happens in East-West traffic, the communication between internal systems. Network visibility into this traffic is essential for catching attackers mid-move.

Detect Abnormal Authentication Patterns

Watch for unusual login activity, like a single account authenticating to dozens of systems in a short window, or logins at odd hours from unexpected locations.

Analyze Privileged Account Behavior

Privileged accounts are prime targets. Monitor admin and service accounts for activity that deviates from their normal patterns, such as accessing systems they don’t typically touch.

Use Network Traffic Intelligence

Deep packet inspection and metadata analysis can reveal lateral movement even when attackers use encrypted channels. The Gigamon Deep Observability Pipeline provides the traffic intelligence needed to detect lateral movement across hybrid environments.

Correlate Identity and Network Signals

Combining identity data with network telemetry gives security teams a clearer picture. When you can see both who is authenticating and what traffic they’re generating, anomalies are easier to identify.

How to Prevent Lateral Movement

Stopping lateral movement requires a layered approach that limits what attackers can do even after they get inside. Here are the most effective prevention strategies:

Enforce Least Privilege Access

Every user and service account should have only the minimum permissions needed. Reducing unnecessary access limits how far an attacker can move with any single set of credentials.

Implement Zero Trust Segmentation

A Zero Trust approach assumes no user or device should be trusted by default. Microsegmentation divides the network into isolated zones, so compromising one segment doesn’t grant access to others. Organizations looking to implement Zero Trust architecture should start with visibility into what’s actually happening on their network.

Strengthen Identity and Access Management

Multi-factor authentication, regular credential rotation, and monitoring for compromised accounts all reduce the risk of credential-based lateral movement.

Patch and Harden Systems

Unpatched vulnerabilities are easy entry points and pivot points. Regular patching, disabling unnecessary services, and hardening configurations reduce the attack surface.

Increase Network Visibility

You can’t stop what you can’t see. Encrypted East-West traffic creates blind spots that attackers exploit during lateral movement. Gaining full visibility into network traffic, including encrypted flows, is foundational to both detection and prevention. Gigamon AI and the Deep Observability Pipeline help close these gaps by delivering actionable intelligence across the entire network.

Lateral Movement in Cloud and Hybrid Environments

Lateral movement isn’t limited to on-premises networks. In cloud and hybrid environments, attackers adapt their techniques to take advantage of cloud-native infrastructure.

Cloud workload movement is a growing concern, as attackers pivot between virtual machines, containers, and serverless functions within platforms like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Identity-based pivoting is common in the cloud, where compromised IAM roles or service accounts can grant broad access across resources.

Multi-cloud East-West traffic adds complexity. When workloads span multiple providers, monitoring lateral movement between them requires visibility that most native cloud tools don’t provide. SaaS privilege abuse is also on the rise, with attackers exploiting over permissioned accounts to access connected systems.

Strong cloud security practices and deep observability into cloud traffic are essential for catching lateral movement across these environments.

Wrapping Up: Understanding Lateral Movement in Cybersecurity

Lateral movement is one of the most effective tactics in an attacker’s playbook. The ability to move undetected between systems is what turns a minor breach into a catastrophic one. The organizations that successfully stop lateral movement are the ones with deep visibility into their traffic, strong identity controls, and a Zero Trust approach that limits every account’s reach.

Gigamon gives security teams the observability they need to detect and disrupt lateral movement across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments. By eliminating blind spots in encrypted traffic, the Deep Observability Pipeline ensures threats don’t move unnoticed. Request a live demo to see it in action.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do attackers use lateral movement?

Attackers use lateral movement because an initial compromise rarely gives them access to what they actually want. By moving between systems, they can locate high-value targets like databases and domain controllers. It also helps them establish persistence, so they maintain access even if one entry point is discovered.

What is the difference between vertical and lateral movement?

Vertical movement refers to privilege escalation — gaining higher-level permissions on a single system, such as moving from a standard user to an admin account. Lateral movement refers to moving between different systems within the network. In practice, attackers use both: escalating privileges on one machine, then using those elevated credentials to access others.

How does Zero Trust prevent lateral movement?

Zero Trust prevents lateral movement by eliminating implicit trust within the network. Instead of assuming internal traffic is safe, Zero Trust requires continuous verification of every user, device, and connection. Microsegmentation limits communication between network zones, so even if an attacker compromises one segment, they can’t freely move to others. Combined with least privilege access and strong identity verification, this significantly reduces the paths available for lateral movement.

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