The toughest part of most cyberattacks isn’t the break-in. It’s what happens after. Once an attacker is inside, they move sideways—testing connections, escalating privileges and spreading until a small crack turns into a gaping wound. I’ve been covering this space for years, and what strikes me is how often we keep relearning the same lesson: prevention is never perfect, and it’s the spread that really does the damage.
Illumio’s 2025 Global Cloud Detection and Response Report reinforces what I’ve seen in my own conversations with security leaders. Most organizations say they’re monitoring hybrid communications and east-west traffic. On paper, that sounds reassuring. But when you ask if they have the context to make sense of it all, confidence drops fast. You can collect logs and flow data until your storage bills make your CFO break into a sweat, but if you can’t tell which workload is talking to which service—or whether that chatter matters—you’re effectively blind.
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