Episode 12 — Identify relevant threats and potential attack paths unique to your environment
In this episode, we’re going to learn how to identify threats that actually matter to a specific organization and how to think through the attack paths an adversary could realistically use. Beginners often hear lists of threats that sound universal, like phishing, ransomware, or data theft, and those are real, but the way they show up depends heavily on what an organization does and how it is built. If you treat threats as generic, you end up with generic defenses that may miss the most likely or most damaging paths in your own environment. The point is not to become paranoid about every possibility, but to become precise about the most relevant possibilities. When you can identify the threats that fit your environment and map the paths those threats would take, you can prioritize controls, monitoring, and response planning in a defensible way. That is a core management skill because it turns security planning into targeted risk reduction rather than random spending and hope.
Before we continue, a quick note: this audio course is a companion to our course companion books. The first book is about the exam and provides detailed information on how to pass it best. The second book is a Kindle-only eBook that contains 1,000 flashcards that can be used on your mobile device or Kindle. Check them both out at Cyber Author dot me, in the Bare Metal Study Guides Series.
Start with the idea that relevance comes from your environment’s assets, exposures, and constraints. Assets are the things that have value, such as sensitive data, critical services, and the systems that support business operations. Exposures are the ways an attacker might reach those assets, such as internet-facing services, user email accounts, remote access systems, or third-party connections. Constraints are what limits your defensive options, such as limited staffing, legacy systems, or strict uptime requirements. A threat becomes relevant when it can plausibly exploit an exposure to reach an asset in a way that causes harm, and when the organization’s constraints make that harm difficult to prevent or recover from quickly. This is why a threat list without context is not very useful, because context determines which threats are likely and which are mostly noise. If you can name your key assets, common exposures, and major constraints, you already have the ingredients needed to identify relevant threats.
Another key input is understanding how your organization actually works day to day, because attacker paths often follow normal workflows. If employees regularly access systems from remote locations, identity becomes a central part of the attack surface. If the organization relies on cloud services for storage and collaboration, data access patterns and configuration become major considerations. If there are large numbers of partners or vendors with access, third-party trust paths become potential entry points. Attackers often prefer to blend in with normal operations because that reduces detection, so learning normal operations is part of threat identification. Beginners sometimes imagine attackers only use dramatic actions, but many successful attacks look like normal activity at first. That is why environment-specific thinking matters, because normal is different in every organization. When you identify normal workflows, you can also identify where abnormal behavior would stand out and where it might hide.
To identify relevant threats, you can think in terms of attacker goals and match them to what is valuable in your environment. Common attacker goals include gaining access, gaining control, stealing data, disrupting operations, or creating leverage for extortion. If your environment has high-value data like customer information, the data theft goal becomes more relevant. If your environment depends on continuous service availability, disruption and extortion become more relevant. If your environment has powerful centralized identity systems, attackers may focus on gaining control because it provides broad access and long-term leverage. This goal-based approach is useful because it is stable even when specific tools and tactics change. Once you know the goals an attacker might pursue, you can begin mapping the likely paths they would use to get there. This keeps your analysis from turning into guesswork because you are always linking threats back to objectives and value.
Now shift from threats to attack paths, which are the realistic sequences of steps an attacker could take from entry to impact. An attack path is not just one event, it is a chain that often includes initial access, internal discovery, privilege changes, movement, and final actions like data access or disruption. Mapping attack paths matters because controls are most effective when they break the chain early and at multiple points. If you only defend the final step, you might detect the attacker too late. If you defend only the entry point, you might miss alternate entry routes that lead to the same internal outcome. A path map helps you see where layered defense should exist and where monitoring should be concentrated. It also helps you plan response because you can anticipate what evidence would appear at each stage. For exam thinking, the best answers often reflect this chain mindset rather than treating attacks as single-step events.
A practical way to discover environment-specific paths is to focus on trust relationships, because trust is what allows movement. Trust relationships include which systems can talk to which other systems, which accounts have access to which resources, and which processes are allowed to perform sensitive actions. Attackers love trust relationships because they can turn legitimate access into illegitimate outcomes. For example, if a user account can access many shared systems, a stolen credential can become a stepping stone to broader exposure. If a service account has broad permissions, an attacker who compromises that account can move quickly. If a system is allowed to connect to a critical database without strong checks, compromising the system becomes a path to the database. When you map trust, you are essentially mapping where an attacker could move without hitting strong barriers. This is why least privilege and segmentation are architectural controls that matter so much, because they reshape trust in a way that limits attack paths.
Another strong method is to examine entry points, because attack paths start somewhere. Entry points often include email, remote access, internet-facing services, user devices, and vendor connections. For email-driven entry, the path might begin with a message that tricks a user into sharing credentials, followed by a login that looks legitimate, followed by access to cloud resources. For remote access, the path might involve weak authentication, misconfiguration, or stolen credentials that enable access into internal systems. For internet-facing services, the path might involve exploiting a vulnerability, then using that foothold to pivot internally. For vendor connections, the path might involve an attacker compromising the vendor and then using trusted access into your environment. You do not need to know exact technical exploits to map these paths; you need to understand how access could be gained and how that access could expand. That is what makes the analysis useful and beginner-friendly.
Once entry is considered, think about what an attacker would do to increase capability, because attackers rarely stop at initial access. Privilege escalation is a common next step because it turns limited access into broad control. That might happen through misconfigurations, weak permissions, exposed secrets, or poor access governance. Persistence is also common because attackers want to survive basic cleanup, so they may try to create alternate access methods. Internal discovery often follows because attackers need to learn what systems exist and where valuable data lives. Lateral movement happens when attackers pivot between systems to reach better positions, often following trust relationships and credentials. Finally, the attacker acts on the objective, such as copying data, encrypting systems, or disabling defenses. When you map these steps, you are not predicting a single exact timeline, you are identifying common moves that are plausible in your environment. This allows you to decide where you must detect early and where you must limit damage.
A common misconception is that attack paths are only about technology, but people and process are often part of the path. For example, if the organization has weak procedures for approving access requests, social engineering can become a path to privilege. If change management is informal, attackers might exploit the confusion to make unauthorized changes that go unnoticed. If incident response escalation is unclear, attackers gain time because defenders hesitate. Attack paths can include gaps in communication, unclear authority, and slow decision-making, because those gaps create defender delays that attackers exploit. Identifying these non-technical path elements is important for security operations management because improvements often involve policy and workflow as much as systems. When you can explain that a path is enabled by process weaknesses, you are thinking like a manager, not just like a technician. That broader thinking often leads to more effective risk reduction.
After you identify plausible threats and paths, the next step is prioritization, because you cannot address everything at once. Prioritize paths that are both likely and high impact, meaning they use exposures that exist today and lead to harm that would be difficult to tolerate. Consider which assets are most critical and which paths reach them with the fewest barriers. Consider where visibility is weakest, because weak visibility increases risk even if controls exist, since you might not notice failure quickly. Also consider where controls are fragile, meaning they depend on one layer or one assumption that could fail. A manager-focused approach prioritizes improving high-leverage areas first, such as strengthening identity controls, improving logging for critical systems, or tightening access boundaries around sensitive data. These changes often reduce multiple attack paths at once, which is efficient and defensible. The key is to prioritize based on your environment’s reality, not on what feels most dramatic.
Now connect this to detection and response planning, because identifying paths is not the end, it is the input to operational decisions. Once you map a path, ask what early signals you would expect to see if that path is being used. For example, the early signal might be unusual authentication activity, unexpected account changes, rare connections between systems, or unusual access to sensitive data. Those signals guide what you should log, what you should alert on, and what you should validate first during triage. Paths also guide response playbooks because they suggest what containment steps might be appropriate, such as limiting access, isolating systems, or disabling suspicious accounts, depending on the evidence. The goal is to act proportionally, meaning you validate quickly, contain intelligently, and avoid unnecessary disruption. When you design detections and response actions around paths, your S O C becomes proactive, because it is prepared for the most plausible sequences rather than reacting to random alerts. That is exactly the value of environment-specific threat thinking.
Finally, remember that threats and paths are not static, because environments change, business goals change, and attackers adapt. New systems get added, new vendors connect, access patterns shift, and what was once low risk can become high risk. That means identifying relevant threats and paths is an ongoing practice, not a one-time workshop. A good security operations program revisits its assumptions, updates its path models, and uses incident lessons and intelligence to refine priorities. As a beginner, the most important thing to carry forward is the method: identify assets, exposures, and constraints, match attacker goals to what is valuable, map realistic step-by-step paths, and prioritize the paths that matter most. If you can explain and apply that method, you will be able to answer exam questions that ask what threats are most relevant and what defenses should come first. More importantly, you will have the mindset that turns security operations planning into targeted, defensible decisions instead of guesswork and fear.
