How Security Graphs Turn Cyber Noise Into Real Risk Action

Vulnerabilities are tracked. Endpoints are patched. Alerts are quiet. On paper, it looks like you’re winning.

But you can’t shake the feeling that something’s off.

Maybe it’s a forgotten cloud server. A misconfigured policy. Or an attacker already inside, quietly moving laterally.

This is the reality of cybersecurity today. The problem isn’t lack of data. It’s the inability to see how that data connects and to know what to do next.

In Think Like an Attacker, Dr. Chase Cunningham, known in the cyber industry as Dr. Zero Trust, explains that the real danger lies in your network’s internal relationships: the hidden links between users, devices, and systems where attackers lurk unnoticed.

To spot those paths, you need more than alerts. You need a security graph. If you can’t see how everything connects, you can’t protect it.

Why we need security graphs in a data-heavy world

Modern IT environments generate billions of data points each day. Devices connect and disconnect, users log in from everywhere, and workloads spin up and down.  

This leaves security teams drowning in alerts. What they need isn’t more data but better context.

Security graphs turn that sea of noise into a map of meaningful relationships. Instead of digging through logs, analysts can visualize how systems, users, and applications interact.

What talks to what? Who accessed what? Where are the choke points?

“Security graphs uncover hidden attack pathways, illuminate asset relationships, and enable lightning-fast correlation of events,” Chase explains.

Graph theory isn’t new. According to Chase, law enforcement agencies have used link analysis since the 1970s to map criminal networks.  

Now, cybersecurity is applying the same logic to detect complex threats, understand attack paths, and shrink the gap between signal and action.

Security graphs uncover hidden attack pathways, illuminate asset relationships, and enable lightning-fast correlation of events.

Use case #1: map real-time attack paths

Security graphs shine in incident response. Imagine a user falls for a phishing email, and an attacker uses their credentials to access internal systems. How do you trace their path?

With a graph, you don’t have to manually piece together logs across systems. You can see the attacker’s journey visualized: from the compromised user to the lateral movement through connected systems and finally to the exfiltration point.  

Security graphs give you the context to understand how far the attacker went, what systems were touched, and where you need to contain or remediate.

“Graph analytics can automatically connect the dots of an attack campaign,” Chase says.

He sees security graphs being particularly powerful when aligned with frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK. Graphs can be coded to detect known adversary patterns, like credential theft followed by lateral movement, then data staging and exfiltration.

Use case #2: prioritize what to secure first

Not all vulnerabilities are created equal. A Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score tells you risk in a vacuum, but a security graph tells you risk in context.

That unpatched web server isn’t urgent on its own. If it’s one hop away from a database full of personally identifiable information (PII), suddenly it’s critical.

According to Chase, “graph analysis provides a solution by creating attack graphs that show how weaknesses can combine to endanger critical assets.”

This means security teams can use graph-based analysis to build attack graphs that show how flaws can be chained together to reach critical assets. They can prioritize patching not by what looks scary in isolation, but by what actually puts the business at risk.  

Graph analysis provides a solution by creating attack graphs that show how weaknesses can combine to endanger critical assets.

Chase cites tools like MITRE’s CyGraph that create “enterprise resilience knowledge bases” to map how vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and access permissions combine into real attack scenarios.

Use case #3: tell a better story to the board

You might understand your risk, but can you show it? Today’s boards know security risk is business risk. It’s up to security leaders to translate the technical details so they resonate with board-level goals.

Security graphs are more than just a tool for analysts. They’re powerful communication aids.  

They help security leaders move from vague risk language to visual, data-backed storytelling.  

You can show how an attacker can use an unseen vulnerability in an application to your critical systems. You can demonstrate the top five paths to your customer database. You can walk the board through exactly which segments you need to enforce to break those paths.

“Graph visualization helps the security analysts and improves communication with non-technical stakeholders,” Chase explains.

Boards want simplicity and clarity, and graphs help security teams deliver that.

Illumio Insights: real-time observability built on a security graph

Illumio Insights makes graph theory real. It’s an AI cloud detection and response (CDR) solution built on a dynamic, living security graph of your entire hybrid environment.

Powered by AI and enriched with third-party data, Insights maps real-time communication between applications, endpoints, and workloads across your environment. It continuously visualizes traffic flows, highlights policy violations, and surfaces high-risk exposure paths that attackers could exploit.  

With this information, security teams get the context they need to understand what’s happening in the network and proactively contain risk before an incident happens.

Insights cuts through the alert noise so you know where to focus. It lets you move from reactive triage to proactive control. You get a unified view of your network, so you know which security gap to act on next.

In other words, Insights turns the promise of security graphs into actions your team can take today.

Why security graphs matter now

The attacks aren’t slowing down, and environments aren’t getting simpler.  

Security graphs are essential in today’s hyper-connected networks. The only way to defend against modern, lateral-moving, multi-vector threats is to see your network’s traffic flows, understand their risk, and prioritize what to act on next.

Now is the time to shift from isolated alerts to interconnected insight. Security graphs are the key.

Start your Illumio Insights free trial today and turn alert fatigue into actionable clarity.