5 Cyber Kill Chain Challenges and How to Prevail

Adam Goss
12 min readMay 6, 2024
Cyber Kill Chain Challenges

If you use the Cyber Kill Chain in the real world, Cyber Kill Chain challenges you will face.

Lockheed Martin’s Cyber Kill Chain is an excellent framework for analyzing cyber attacks and mapping intrusion data. However, using it in the real world can prove challenging if you misinterpret its purpose, lack experience using it, or fail to integrate it with other cyber security frameworks and models.

This article explores the top five Cyber Kill Chain challenges you will encounter using the framework. These range from its static, linear design to its assumption of complete visibility and the heavy focus on preventative measures. Along with each challenge, strategies for overcoming them are presented so you can get back to kicking ass.

Let’s begin by quickly recapping the Cyber Kill Chain and its seven stages.

Cyber Kill Chain Recap

The Cyber Kill Chain is a framework for cyber security professionals to structure their cyber intrusion analysis. Developed by Lockheed Martin in 2011, it has since become a fundamental tool for defenders across the industry.

The framework consists of seven stages that describe how an adversary performs a typical cyber attack.

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Adam Goss

Helping demystify cyber threat intelligence for businesses and individuals | CTI | Threat Hunting | Custom Tooling