What is Network Attack?
A network attack is an attempt to compromise systems, services, communications, or data by exploiting or misusing a network and the devices connected to it.
The attack may attempt to:
- Gain unauthorized network access
- Intercept communications
- Steal credentials or sensitive information
- Manipulate network traffic
- Exploit a network vulnerability
- Discover systems and services
- Move between internal systems
- Establish command-and-control communications
- Exfiltrate information
- Disrupt or disable services
NIST describes an attack broadly as malicious activity intended to collect, disrupt, deny, degrade, or destroy information system resources or information. Its definitions also include attempts to gain unauthorized access or compromise system confidentiality, integrity, or availability.
A computer network attack therefore does not have to begin with an obviously malicious packet. An attacker may first compromise an account through phishing, exploit a vulnerable internet-facing service, or abuse credentials obtained elsewhere. The network attack becomes visible as that access is used to communicate with systems, enumerate resources, move laterally, control compromised hosts, or transfer data.
A network attack is malicious activity that targets, uses, or travels through a computer network to gain unauthorized access, disrupt services, manipulate communications, steal information, or compromise connected systems.
Some network attack are easy to recognize. A distributed denial-of-service attack that overwhelms an internet-facing service with traffic leaves an obvious operational impact. Others are deliberately quiet. An attacker using valid credentials may move between internal systems, query network services, and communicate with external infrastructure without generating anything that immediately looks malicious.
That difference matters. Modern network attack detection depends on more than finding a known malware signature or blocking a suspicious IP address. Security teams increasingly need to understand how systems normally communicate, recognize changes in those patterns, and preserve enough network evidence to reconstruct what happened when a network attack is discovered.
Synonyms
- Cyberattack
- Network Breach
- Cyber Intrusion
- Network Exploit
- Malicious Attack
- Network Intrusion
- Network Compromise
- Network Penetration
- Network Security Attack
- Denial-of-service (DoS) Attack
- Man-in-the-middle (MITM) Attack
- Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Attack
How Does a Network Attack Work?
There is no single sequence followed by every attacker. A short-lived denial-of-service attack behaves very differently from an advanced persistent threat that remains inside an environment for an extended period.
Still, many attacks in network security can be understood as a progression of behaviors.
1. Initial Access:
The attacker first needs a way into the environment. Possible attack vectors include compromised credentials, exposed services, vulnerable applications, phishing, social engineering, third-party access, malware, or a compromised supplier.
The initial access technique does not necessarily constitute a network attack on its own. For example, phishing primarily targets a person. What happens after a credential is stolen or malware executes can create extensive malicious network activity.
2. Network Discovery:
Once inside, attackers often need to understand where they have landed.
They may identify:
- Available hosts
- Open ports
- Network services
- Domain resources
- File shares
- Remote management services
- High-value servers
- Trust relationships
This activity can create recognizable patterns such as one endpoint attempting connections across numerous addresses or ports.
3. Credential and Privilege Abuse:
Attackers may steal, reuse, or otherwise abuse credentials to access additional resources. At this point, an attacker may not need to exploit another technical vulnerability. A valid username and password can make malicious activity look surprisingly similar to legitimate administration.
4. Lateral Movement:
Access to one endpoint is rarely the final objective of a serious intrusion. Attackers may use protocols and services such as SMB, RDP, SSH, remote administration utilities, or other trusted mechanisms to reach additional systems. MITRE ATT&CK notes that adversaries may exploit remote services specifically to gain access to internal systems and enable lateral movement.
This is one reason network traffic monitoring inside the environment matters. Perimeter monitoring alone may miss important east-west activity occurring between internal systems.
5. Command and Control:
A compromised system may communicate with infrastructure controlled by the attacker to receive commands or return information.
The difficulty is that command-and-control traffic does not always use an unusual protocol. Attackers can communicate through HTTP, HTTPS, DNS, mail protocols, and other common services precisely because those protocols already appear throughout enterprise networks. MITRE documents this use of normal application-layer protocols to blend malicious communications with legitimate network activity.
6. Exfiltration or Disruption:
The attacker may ultimately steal data, encrypt systems, interrupt operations, manipulate information, or maintain access for future use.
MITRE’s ATT&CK framework describes exfiltration techniques as methods adversaries use to remove collected data from a network, sometimes through the same command-and-control channel already in use.
Not every network attack reaches all six stages. But thinking in terms of an attack path helps security teams recognize that a network security compromise is often a sequence of related behaviors rather than one isolated malicious connection.
Active vs. Passive Network Attack
One useful way to understand the different types of network attacks is to separate passive attacks from active attacks.
| Passive network attack | Active network attack |
| Observes or collects information | Changes, disrupts, injects, or interacts with traffic or systems |
| Designed to avoid altering normal communications | Usually creates some change in system or network behavior |
| Often focused on surveillance or information collection | Often focused on access, manipulation, disruption, or propagation |
| Examples include eavesdropping and traffic analysis | Examples include spoofing, session hijacking, MITM, and DoS attacks |
Passive Network Attacks:
A passive network attacker attempts to observe communications without significantly changing them.
Examples include:
- Packet sniffing
- Network eavesdropping
- Traffic analysis
- Capturing unencrypted credentials
- Monitoring communication patterns
Because passive attacks may not cause obvious operational changes, they can be difficult to recognize without strong network visibility and encryption.
Active Network Attacks:
An active network attack interacts with the target environment. The attacker may generate malicious traffic, impersonate another system, change communications, exploit a service, move between devices, or deliberately degrade availability.
Examples include:
- Spoofing
- Man-in-the-middle attacks
- Session hijacking
- Credential-based attacks
- DoS and DDoS attacks
- Exploitation of network services
- Malicious lateral movement
Common Types of Network Attacks
There is no perfect list of network attack because attack techniques frequently overlap. The same intrusion may combine stolen credentials, malware, network reconnaissance, lateral movement, spoofing, and command-and-control traffic.
1. Unauthorized Access Attacks:
An unauthorized access attack occurs when someone obtains access to a network, service, device, or resource without permission.
Access may result from:
- Stolen passwords
- Weak authentication
- Exposed remote access
- Misconfigured services
- Exploited vulnerabilities
- Compromised privileged accounts
Once access is obtained, the attacker may conduct reconnaissance, escalate privileges, access sensitive systems, or begin moving laterally.
2. Credential Stuffing:
Credential stuffing uses previously compromised username-and-password combinations against other services in the hope that users reused credentials.
The network may show repeated authentication attempts, attempts against numerous accounts, unusual source locations, or successful logins inconsistent with the user’s normal behavior.
Credential stuffing highlights why identity and network evidence often need to be investigated together.
3. Malware-Based Attacks:
Malware can create network activity at several points in an intrusion.
A compromised endpoint might:
- Download additional payloads
- Resolve suspicious domains
- Contact command-and-control infrastructure
- Scan internal systems
- Spread to another host
- Transfer stolen information
Network visibility can therefore provide useful evidence even when malware is first discovered somewhere else.
4. Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) Attacks:
A Man-in-the-Middle attack occurs when an attacker positions themselves between communicating parties and intercepts or potentially alters their communications.
Depending on the technique, the attacker may capture credentials, observe sensitive information, manipulate requests, or redirect communications.
Strong encryption and certificate validation significantly reduce many forms of MITM risk, but defenders should also monitor for unexpected changes in routing, name resolution, address mappings, or communication patterns.
5. Spoofing:
Spoofing involves impersonating another device, address, identity, or service.
Examples include:
- IP spoofing
- ARP spoofing
- DNS spoofing
- Email spoofing
The objective depends on the network attack. Spoofing may be used to redirect traffic, bypass simple trust controls, impersonate a legitimate system, or facilitate another attack such as a MITM scenario.
6. DoS Attacks:
A denial-of-service (DoS) attack attempts to make a service or resource unavailable by overwhelming it, exhausting resources, or exploiting a condition that prevents legitimate use.
Sudden changes in connection volume, request rates, protocol behavior, or resource consumption can help defenders identify DoS attacks.
7. DDoS Attacks:
A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack uses numerous systems or traffic sources to overwhelm a target. The distributed nature of the activity makes DDoS attacks more difficult to address than a single-source denial-of-service event because simply blocking one origin is unlikely to stop the network attack.
8. Network Reconnaissance and Scanning:
Network reconnaissance helps an attacker understand an environment before taking further action.
Scanning behavior can reveal:
- Active hosts
- Open ports
- Available services
- Network architecture
- Potentially vulnerable systems
A single connection to a server may be unremarkable. One workstation attempting connections across dozens of previously unrelated systems and ports is much more interesting.
This is where behavioral context becomes important for advanced threat detection.
9. Lateral Movement:
Lateral movement occurs when an attacker moves from one compromised resource to additional systems within the environment.
Rather than using obviously malicious protocols, the attacker may use the same SMB, SSH, RDP, or remote administration services that legitimate administrators rely on.
That makes lateral movement a network analytics problem as much as a signature problem.
10. Command-and-Control Attacks:
Command-and-control, or C2, communication allows attackers to remotely interact with compromised systems.
Possible network indicators include:
- Repeated periodic connections
- Connections to newly observed domains
- Unusual DNS activity
- Unexpected outbound traffic
- Irregular protocol use
- Unusual ports
- Asymmetrical traffic volumes
MITRE’s current detection guidance specifically identifies characteristics such as unusual outbound byte counts, irregular ports, suspicious protocol use, and beacon-like communications as useful signals when investigating application-layer command and control.
11. Phishing and Social Engineering:
Phishing and social engineering are frequently discussed alongside network threats, but they should not automatically be classified as network attacks. They are typically methods for manipulating users or obtaining initial access. They can, however, start a network attack chain.
For example:
Phishing email → stolen credentials → VPN access → network discovery → lateral movement → data exfiltration
12. Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs):
An Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) is not a single network attack technique.
It describes a sustained intrusion in which a capable adversary attempts to maintain access and pursue objectives over time.
An APT operation may combine:
- Social engineering
- Credential theft
- Vulnerability exploitation
- Malware
- Lateral movement
- C2
- Data collection
- Exfiltration
Detecting these attacks often requires correlating multiple weak signals rather than waiting for one unmistakably malicious event.
13. Supply Chain Attacks:
A supply chain attack compromises an organization through a trusted supplier, software dependency, service provider, update mechanism, or other third-party relationship.
Like phishing, a supply chain compromise may represent the entry point rather than the complete network attack.
Once malicious code or unauthorized access reaches the environment, defenders still need to detect what it does next: which systems communicate, where connections originate, what resources are accessed, and whether information leaves the environment.
14. Insider Threats:
Not every network security threat begins outside the organization. Insider threats can involve malicious, negligent, or compromised users who already possess some level of legitimate access.
That makes insider threat detection particularly challenging. Network activity may use authorized accounts, legitimate applications, and approved protocols.
Useful indicators may therefore involve changes in behavior: unexpected access to systems, unusual data movement, abnormal working hours, new destinations, or activity inconsistent with a user’s role.
Network Attack vs. Cyberattack vs. Network Threat vs. Vulnerability
These terms are related but not interchangeable.
| Term | Meaning |
| Network attack | Malicious activity that targets, manipulates, disrupts, or uses network communications, infrastructure, or connected systems |
| Cyberattack | A broader malicious action against digital systems, applications, identities, networks, or information |
| Network threat | Anything capable of causing harm to network resources or communications |
| Network vulnerability | A weakness that could be exploited to compromise a network or connected resource |
| Attack vector | The path or method through which an attacker attempts to gain access or achieve an objective |
| Attack surface | The collection of systems, interfaces, services, identities, connections, and other points through which an environment could potentially be attacked |
For example, an internet-facing VPN appliance may form part of an organization’s attack surface. An unpatched flaw in that appliance is a network vulnerability. Exploiting it is an attack vector. Using the resulting access to scan internal systems and move laterally becomes part of the network attack.
Attack surface management helps organizations identify and reduce exposed assets and potential entry points, but reducing the attack surface does not remove the need to detect malicious activity that successfully gets through.
What Does a Network Attack Look Like in Network Traffic?
This is where network security becomes more practical.
Attackers ultimately need systems to communicate. Even when the endpoint process is hidden, or the account appears legitimate, network activity can provide another view of what is happening.
Signals worth investigating include:
1. Unexpected Network Scanning:
A workstation suddenly attempts connections to numerous IP addresses or ports that it has rarely or never accessed before. That may indicate reconnaissance rather than ordinary user activity.
2. New East-West Connections:
A system that normally communicates with two application servers suddenly begins initiating SMB or RDP sessions to systems across several network segments. The individual connections may be legitimate protocols. The change in behavior is what matters.
3. Suspicious DNS Behavior:
Examples include:
- Requests to newly observed domains
- Unusually long or structured queries
- High volumes of failed lookups
- Domains inconsistent with normal business activity
- Repeated DNS communication with unusual patterns
DNS is particularly useful to attackers because it is widely permitted and essential to normal operations.
4. Beacon-Like Communications:
A compromised host may repeatedly contact external infrastructure at regular intervals. A single HTTPS connection is almost meaningless in isolation. A workstation initiating similarly sized connections to the same unusual destination every few minutes deserves more scrutiny.
5. Unexpected Protocol Usage:
A protocol appearing where it does not normally belong can reveal suspicious behavior. Examples might include SMB crossing an unexpected network boundary or a user endpoint suddenly generating remote-administration traffic.
6. Unusual Data Transfers:
A large outbound transfer does not automatically mean data exfiltration. But an unusual volume sent by a server that normally receives rather than transmits substantial data could warrant investigation, particularly when combined with other evidence.
MITRE’s detection guidance similarly emphasizes abnormal traffic volume, protocol misuse, unexpected destinations, and communication patterns when identifying C2 and potential exfiltration.
How are Network Attacks Detected?
Effective network threat detection combines different levels of network evidence.
1. Network Traffic Monitoring:
Network traffic monitoring provides visibility into communications occurring across the environment.
At a basic level, monitoring can answer questions such as:
- Which systems communicated?
- When did the connection occur?
- Which ports and protocols were used?
- How much information moved?
- Was the communication inbound, outbound, or internal?
That visibility becomes the foundation for deeper investigation.
2. Network Traffic Analysis:
Network traffic analysis examines communications for suspicious patterns, anomalies, relationships, and known indicators.
Rather than asking only whether a connection matches a known malicious signature, network traffic analysis and detection can consider:
- Communication frequency
- Traffic direction
- Peer relationships
- Protocol behavior
- Connection timing
- Data volumes
- Historical baselines
NIST describes network intrusion detection systems as technologies that perform packet sniffing and network traffic analysis to identify suspicious activity and record relevant evidence.
3. Packet Capture and PCAP:
Packet capture, commonly associated with PCAP, records packets traversing a network. Flow or metadata may tell an analyst that two hosts communicated. Packet-level evidence can provide deeper context about what happened during that communication when the relevant content is available.
PCAP is particularly valuable during investigations because an alert tells the analyst what a detection system noticed, whereas retained network evidence may help reconstruct the surrounding activity.
Questions might include:
- What occurred immediately before the alert?
- Which system initiated the connection?
- What protocol was actually used?
- Did the communication continue afterward?
- Did the host communicate with other systems?
4. Deep Packet Inspection (DPI):
Deep packet inspection (DPI) examines information beyond basic packet headers to understand protocol behavior and, where technically and legally appropriate, elements of packet content.
DPI can provide richer context than IP addresses and ports alone. Its visibility may be limited when communications are encrypted unless an organization has appropriate methods for inspecting or deriving security signals from encrypted traffic.
5. Network Detection and Response (NDR):
Network detection and response (NDR) combines network visibility, analytics, detection, investigation, and response workflows.
Instead of treating every network event independently, NDR can help identify patterns across communications and surface activity such as:
- Reconnaissance
- Lateral movement
- C2 communication
- Unusual internal relationships
- Suspicious DNS behavior
- Data exfiltration patterns
NDR is particularly useful where malicious activity occurs between systems rather than exclusively at the network perimeter.
6. AI/ML and Advanced Network Analytics:
Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced network analytics can help identify behavior that does not fit established baselines or known relationships.
For example, AI/ML may help identify:
- A device communicating with an unusual peer
- New patterns of service usage
- Unexpected connection timing
- Changes in traffic volume
- Behavioral similarities across multiple suspicious systems
Machine learning is not a replacement for security context. Rare activity is not automatically malicious, and normal-looking activity is not automatically safe.
The value comes from combining analytics with contextual evidence such as identity, asset importance, network topology, known threats, historical behavior, and other security telemetry.
Why are Modern Network Attacks Difficult to Detect?
The difficult attacks are rarely difficult because the organization cannot see any traffic. They are difficult because malicious traffic increasingly resembles legitimate traffic.
- Attackers Use Valid Credentials: An attacker authenticating with stolen credentials may look much like an employee authenticating with the same credentials. This may emerge only when the activity is viewed alongside device, location, network, asset, and behavioral context.
- Attackers Use Normal Protocols: HTTP, HTTPS, DNS, SMB, RDP, and SSH all have legitimate purposes. Attackers know this. MITRE notes that adversaries can use normal application-layer protocols for command and control specifically to blend their activity with existing traffic.
- More Activity Happens Inside the Perimeter: After initial compromise, an attacker may spend considerable effort communicating with internal systems. Monitoring only inbound and outbound traffic can therefore leave an important visibility gap.
- Encryption Limits Content Visibility: Encryption is essential for protecting legitimate communications, but it can also conceal malicious content. Security teams may need to rely more heavily on metadata, destinations, certificates, connection behavior, traffic patterns, endpoint context, and other observable characteristics when payload contents are unavailable.
- Hybrid Environments Expand the Attack Surface: Enterprise communications now routinely span offices, data centers, remote employees, cloud workloads, SaaS services, third-party environments, and operational technology. Network security management therefore has to account for traffic that no longer follows a simple internal-versus-external model.
How Can Organizations Prevent Network Attack?
There is no single technology that provides complete network attack protection.
Effective network attack prevention combines controls that reduce the chance of initial compromise, restrict what attackers can reach, detect suspicious behavior, and support rapid containment.
1. Reduce the Attack Surface:
Maintain an accurate understanding of externally and internally exposed systems, services, applications, remote access pathways, and third-party connections. Remove unnecessary services and correct risky configurations.
2. Fix Known Vulnerabilities:
Continuous vulnerability management, patching, and secure configuration reduce the number of weaknesses available for exploitation. Prioritize vulnerabilities based not only on severity but also on exposure, asset importance, exploitability, and evidence of active threat activity.
3. Strengthen Identity Controls:
Use strong authentication, appropriate privileges, and controls around remote access and administrative accounts. Because many network attack operate through stolen credentials, identity security is inseparable from network security.
4. Use Network Segmentation and Segregation:
Network segmentation and network segregation restrict unnecessary communication between systems or groups of systems. A compromised employee laptop should not automatically provide unrestricted access to critical servers.
CISA recommends segmentation as a way to contain intrusions and prevent or limit adversary lateral movement.
5. Monitor East-West and North-South Traffic:
Internet-facing activity matters, but so does communication between internal systems. Visibility into both directions gives defenders a stronger chance of detecting what happens after initial access.
6. Combine Multiple Sources of Evidence:
Network information becomes more useful when combined with:
- Endpoint telemetry
- Identity activity
- Threat intelligence
- DNS information
- Cloud telemetry
- Asset context
- Authentication logs
This helps distinguish unusual-but-legitimate activity from behavior that deserves immediate investigation.
7. Preserve Evidence for Investigation:
Alerts alone may not provide enough information to understand a sophisticated network attack. Retaining useful network metadata and, where appropriate, packet capture can make it easier to reconstruct the attack path and determine the scope of compromise.
How Does NDR Support Network Attack Defense?
Traditional security controls often focus on known indicators, endpoint behavior, or activity crossing particular boundaries.
NDR adds another perspective: the relationships and behaviors visible in network communications.
A useful NDR investigation should help an analyst move beyond:
“This IP address generated an alert.”
toward questions such as:
- What did the system communicate with before the alert?
- Is this relationship new?
- Did the device scan other assets?
- Did the same identity appear elsewhere?
- Was there evidence of lateral movement?
- Did the host communicate externally?
- Did suspicious activity continue after the initial detection?
- Was data transferred from the environment?
This broader context matters because attackers rarely stay inside one security control’s field of view.
Effective network attack resolution therefore depends not only on detecting suspicious activity but also on establishing what happened, determining which systems were affected, containing malicious access, removing the cause, and validating that the environment has returned to an expected state.
Related Terms & Synonyms
- Cyberattack: A cyberattack is a deliberate attempt to gain unauthorized access to, disrupt, damage, manipulate, or steal data from digital systems, applications, networks, or devices.
- Network Breach: A network breach occurs when an unauthorized individual or system successfully gains access to a network or to resources accessible through it.
- Cyber Intrusion: A cyber intrusion is unauthorized activity within a system or network, which may include reconnaissance, credential abuse, lateral movement, persistence, or data theft.
- Network Exploit: A network exploit is a technique or piece of code that takes advantage of a network vulnerability, configuration weakness, or exposed service to gain access or perform unauthorized actions.
- Malicious Attack: A malicious attack is an intentional action designed to compromise the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of systems, networks, applications, or data.
- Network Intrusion: A network intrusion occurs when an attacker or unauthorized entity enters a network or performs unauthorized activity within it.
- Network Compromise: A network compromise occurs when an attacker successfully bypasses security controls and gains unauthorized access to network resources, communications, systems, or data.
- Network Penetration: Network penetration refers to gaining access to a network by bypassing or exploiting its security controls. In authorized penetration testing, security teams perform this activity deliberately to identify weaknesses before attackers can exploit them.
- Network Security Attack: A network security attack is malicious activity directed at network infrastructure, communications, connected systems, or services with the intent to gain access, steal information, manipulate traffic, or disrupt operations.
- Denial-of-Service (DoS) Attack: A denial-of-service (DoS) attack attempts to make a system, network, or service unavailable to legitimate users by exhausting resources, overwhelming it with requests, or exploiting a weakness that disrupts availability.
- Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) Attack: A Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attack occurs when an attacker secretly intercepts communications between two parties and may monitor, redirect, or alter the information being exchanged.
- Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Attack: A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack overwhelms a target with traffic or requests originating from many systems simultaneously, making legitimate access difficult or impossible.
People Also Ask
1. What are the types of cybersecurity threats?
Cybersecurity threats can take many forms, including:
- Malware and ransomware
- Phishing and social engineering
- Credential theft and credential stuffing
- Insider threats
- Network attacks
- Man-in-the-Middle attacks
- DoS and DDoS attacks
- Vulnerability exploitation
- Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs)
- Supply chain attacks
- Web application attacks
- Cloud account and configuration compromise
These categories often overlap. For example, a phishing campaign may steal credentials that are later used for unauthorized network access, followed by internal reconnaissance, lateral movement, and data exfiltration.
For security teams, understanding the attack chain is often more useful than placing an incident into a single threat category.
2. What are the types of network security?
Network security is not one control or technology. It is usually built from several complementary approaches, including:
- Network access control: Restricts who and what can connect to network resources.
- Firewalls: Control traffic between networks, systems, or security zones.
- IDS/IPS: Detect or block suspicious network activity.
- Network segmentation: Separates systems and workloads to limit unnecessary communication and lateral movement.
- Network detection and response (NDR): Analyzes network activity to identify suspicious behavior and support investigation and response.
- Network traffic analysis: Examines communications, connections, protocols, and patterns for abnormal or malicious activity.
- VPN and secure remote access: Protect connections from remote users and locations.
- Encryption: Protects information while it moves across networks.
- DNS security: Helps detect or prevent malicious use of domain-name infrastructure.
- Wireless network security: Protects Wi-Fi networks, devices, and wireless communications.
Effective network security management combines these controls rather than depending on any one of them.
3. How can organizations prevent network security threats?
Organizations can reduce exposure to network security threats by combining preventive controls with continuous detection.
Important measures include:
- Patch known vulnerabilities promptly.
- Remove unnecessary internet-facing services.
- Strengthen authentication and privileged access.
- Apply least-privilege principles.
- Use network segmentation and segregation.
- Secure remote access.
- Continuously monitor network traffic.
- Detect unusual east-west communication.
- Maintain accurate asset inventories.
- Monitor DNS and outbound connections.
- Use threat intelligence to identify known malicious infrastructure.
- Deploy NDR, IDS/IPS, endpoint security, and other complementary controls.
- Preserve network evidence for investigation.
- Maintain tested incident response procedures.
Prevention alone is not enough. Some attackers will eventually bypass preventive controls, which is why network attack detection and rapid response remain important parts of network defense.
4. What are common network security threats?
Common network security threats include:
- Unauthorized network access
- Credential compromise
- Malware and ransomware
- DoS and DDoS attacks
- Man-in-the-Middle attacks
- Spoofing
- Network reconnaissance and scanning
- Exploitation of vulnerable network services
- Lateral movement
- Command-and-control traffic
- Data exfiltration
- Insider threats
- Compromised network devices
- Supply chain compromise
The threat itself may also change as an intrusion progresses. Stolen credentials, for example, may begin as an identity security issue but quickly become a network security problem when the attacker uses them to access internal systems and move laterally.
5. Which type of network poses increasing challenges?
Hybrid and highly distributed enterprise networks pose increasing security challenges because users, workloads, applications, and data now operate across on-premises infrastructure, cloud environments, remote locations, SaaS platforms, and third-party services.
This changes what defenders need to monitor. Traffic may no longer pass through a single traditional network perimeter, while legitimate communication between cloud workloads, remote endpoints, and internal resources can make abnormal activity harder to distinguish.
The challenge is therefore less about one particular network technology being inherently insecure and more about maintaining consistent visibility and security controls across a growing and changing attack surface.
6. What constitutes a threat to a network?
A network threat is anything capable of compromising the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of network resources, communications, systems, or data.
A threat could involve:
- An external attacker
- A malicious or compromised insider
- Malware
- Stolen credentials
- A vulnerable network service
- A compromised device
- Malicious network traffic
- Misconfiguration
- A third-party compromise
- An attacker-controlled command-and-control system
A threat should not be confused with a vulnerability. A network vulnerability is a weakness, while a threat is something capable of exploiting that weakness or otherwise causing harm. A network attack occurs when malicious action is actually taken against the environment.
