Cybercriminals do not sleep. Every single day, new phishing campaigns emerge, ransomware deployments escalate, and attackers probe your defences. Yet, most organisations still fail to understand a critical truth: modern cyberattacks no longer follow the linear playbook assumed by security models from 15 years ago.
Attackers are adapting to a dynamically changing reality. They test multiple entry points, skip stages when blocked, and focus the majority of their efforts on what happens after they penetrate your network. If your security strategy still assumes threats can be stopped solely at the perimeter, and this means, that you are operating with an outdated map in a fundamentally different landscape. And this can lead you astray.
The problem: defence based on outdated assumptions
For decades, security strategies were built on a simple premise: “If we stop attacks at the perimeter, we win.” Deploy firewalls, implement email filtering, patch vulnerabilities, and block threats right from the start.
This worked reasonably well when attacks were simpler and followed straightforward sequences. But the world has changed. According to IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach 2024 report, the average cost of a breach has reached 4.88 million USD, and critically, the mean time to contain an incident is 70 days.
Think about that: threats sitting inside your network, undetected and unchecked, for over two months. And they have free rein. The traditional defence model cannot explain this gap.
Here is what actually happens:
An attacker phishes one employee and gains access to a single workstation. From that entry point, they spend weeks exploring your network, harvesting credentials, escalating privileges, and moving laterally-all whilst sitting inside your perimeter. Your firewall cannot stop this. Your email filter cannot detect it. The threat is no longer coming from the outside; it is already within your walls. And that means it’s already too late. That you’re already in real danger.
Unified Kill Chain - what it is and how it works
The Unified Kill Chain (UKC) was developed through the analysis of real threat actor campaigns-not theory, but actual incidents. Unlike the traditional Cyber Kill Chain, which assumed a linear progression of seven stages, the UKC acknowledges that attackers adapt, pivot, and retry.
It maps 18 distinct phases across three strategic layers:
Layer 1: IN – Breaking Through Initial Defences
This layer consists of eight phases, including Reconnaissance, Resource Development, Delivery, and Social Engineering.
These are the phases your perimeter is designed to stop (e.g., via email filters and MFA). However, organisations often stop thinking here, asking, “did we block it?” instead of the more critical question: “what if it got through?” The most important thing is to stay one step ahead of the criminal, not one step behind.
Layer 2: THROUGH – Where Breaches Become Disasters
This is where attackers spend the most time and where the real damage occurs.
Six phases make up this layer: Pivoting, Discovery, Privilege Escalation, Execution, Credential Access, and Lateral Movement.
Once inside, attackers systematically work through your network. A SOC with weak visibility into lateral movement will miss attackers even after they have compromised systems.
„The ‘Through’ phase is where we see the biggest impact as a SOC. Organisations with strong network segmentation, multi-factor authentication, and behavioural analytics fundamentally change the attacker’s calculus. Lateral movement becomes exponentially harder. We have seen incidents where our clients had strong defences at this layer, and attackers simply could not progress beyond the initial compromised system”.
Layer 3: OUT – Achieving Objectives
The final phases involve Collection, Exfiltration, and Impact-where attackers steal data or deploy ransomware. If defences in the first two layers fail, speed is your only remaining ally. The faster you detect exfiltration, the smaller your financial loss.
Three scenarios: where do you stand?
Understanding the framework is one thing; seeing the risk is another.
- Traditional Perimeter-Only Defence: Strong firewalls and endpoint protection, but no visibility into lateral movement.
- Result: Once the perimeter is breached, attackers have unrestricted access.
- Detection: takes weeks.
- Damage: is extensive.
- Perimeter + Basic “Through” Defences: Perimeter security combined with network segmentation and basic log monitoring.
- Result: Attackers are confined to limited segments.
- Detection: happens in hours.
- Damage: is contained.
- Mature SOC with Kill Chain Visibility (The Euvic Model): Full defensive stack including behavioural analytics, threat intelligence, and incident response aligned to UKC phases.
- Result: Visibility across all three layers.
- Detection: in minutes.
- Damage: is minimal or prevented entirely.
How Euvic implements kill chain defence
At Euvic, we haven’t just adopted the Unified Kill Chain-we designed our entire SOC around it.
- Kill Chain Aligned Detection Rules: Our SIEM systems are configured to detect suspicious activity mapped to specific phases. For example, credential theft is identified via behavioural analysis, while lateral movement triggers segmentation alerts.
- Contextualised Threat Intelligence: We do not defend against generic threats; we defend against the specific actors targeting your industry. We map their typical kill chain patterns to tune our detection logic.
- Structured Incident Response: When we detect suspicious activity, we immediately identify the UKC phase. Early-phase detections trigger monitoring; mid-phase detections trigger immediate isolation. This structure dramatically improves response speed.
„When you implement Kill Chain visibility in your SOC operations, everything changes. Suddenly, your detection rules have context. The shift from ‘we detected something suspicious’ to ‘we detected phase X of an attack’ transforms how your analysts think and respond. It cuts incident investigation time in half.”.
Summary: defence that maps to reality
Traditional defence models focus on the perimeter, but real attacks succeed through lateral movement inside your network. The Unified Kill Chain accounts for this reality.
Organisations that align their SOC operations to this framework-contextualising detection, response, and threat intelligence-dramatically improve their ability to contain threats. At Euvic, this is not theory; it is how we operate.
Want to understand how your organisation stacks up against this framework?
Contact us to evaluate your defences with the Unified Kill Chain model and plan SOC capability improvements.
