Understanding Wiz Attack Path Analysis: Mapping and Mitigating Cloud Attack Paths

What is attack path analysis in the cloud?

Cloud attack path analysis is a method for identifying and understanding the routes that an attacker could take to move from an initial foothold to critical assets within a cloud environment. In today’s complex deployments, permissions, network rules, storage policies, and misconfigurations can create unseen connections between identities, services, and data. Wiz Attack Path Analysis brings these hidden connections into a single, interpretable view. By converting sprawling cloud configurations into a network of possible paths, security teams can see where to focus remediation efforts and how changes in one area may ripple across the environment.

How Wiz builds the attack path graph

The core idea behind Wiz Attack Path Analysis is to transform cloud data into a graph that represents potential sequences an attacker might exploit. This involves collecting diverse data sources and translating them into nodes and edges that illustrate access and privilege flows. Typical inputs include:

Identity and access management (IAM) roles, permissions, and trust policies
Network configurations such as security groups, firewall rules, and peering connections
Resource configurations for compute, storage, databases, and serverless functions
Secrets and credential stores, rotation policies, and exposure risks
Resource relationships, such as which service can access which storage bucket or database

With these inputs, Wiz constructs a directed graph where an edge represents a feasible step an attacker could take to move closer to a valuable target. The platform then analyzes possible sequences, identifies high-risk paths, and estimates their likelihood based on real-world exploitation patterns and the current security posture.

Key components of the Wiz attack path graph

Understanding the graph helps teams interpret risk fast. The main components typically include:

Assets: Any resource that holds value or sensitive data, such as databases, secrets stores, or privilege accounts.
Connections: Edges that show how access can flow from one asset or identity to another, through permissions, network reachability, or data access rules.
Privileges: The level of authority granted at each node, including long-lived credentials, temporary tokens, or broad IAM roles.
Blast radius: An estimate of how far an attacker could move if a certain path is exploited, helping prioritize fixes by impact.
Risk score: A composite measure that blends exposure, likelihood, and potential impact for each path segment.

By visualizing these elements together, organizations can pinpoint not just single misconfigurations but the cumulative effect of multiple weaknesses that create a realistic attack scenario.

Common attack paths you may encounter

While each cloud environment is unique, several recurring patterns show up in attack path analysis reports. Recognizing them helps security teams act quickly:

Compromised credentials leading to elevated access: An exposed access key or leaked token combined with a permissive role can unlock broad access across services.
Over-permissive IAM policies: Roles or policies that grant more permissions than necessary create multiple potential routes for privilege escalation.
Cross-account and cross-project permissions: Trust relationships or shared resources can bridge gaps between environments, expanding the attack surface.
Misconfigured storage and data services: Public buckets, overly broad bucket policies, or insecure data access patterns can expose sensitive information that fuels further moves.
Weak service-to-service permissions: Lightweight services with excessive access to critical databases or secrets enable lateral movement after initial compromise.

Wiz Attack Path Analysis helps teams see these patterns in the context of the whole environment, rather than as isolated misconfigurations. This holistic view is crucial for understanding how small changes interact to create dangerous paths.

From insight to action: remediating attack paths

Discoveries from attack path analysis should translate into concrete remediation steps. A practical framework often used with Wiz includes:

Enforce the principle of least privilege: Review IAM roles and policies to ensure permissions are narrowly scoped to what is required for tasks. Remove or reduce any excessive privileges.
Segment networks and control east-west movement: Implement tighter network segmentation, restrict unnecessary ingress/egress, and use microsegmentation to limit lateral movement.
Secure credentials and secrets: Rotate keys and tokens, remove long-lived credentials where possible, and adopt centralized secrets management with strict access controls.
Harden data access and storage: Apply fine-grained access controls to databases and storage, use encryption at rest and in transit, and audit access patterns.
Automate continuous assessment: Integrate attack path analysis into CI/CD and continuous monitoring so new changes are evaluated for path risk before deployment (or shortly after).
Prioritize fixes by blast radius and risk: Focus first on paths that connect to highly sensitive assets or have a high likelihood of exploitation.

Effective remediation is not a one-off exercise. It requires ongoing monitoring, periodic re-analysis after changes, and alignment with broader security goals such as compliance requirements and data governance policies.

Best practices for integrating Wiz attack path analysis into your program

To maximize value, consider these practices when deploying Wiz Attack Path Analysis within a security program:

Integrate with existing security workflows: Tie attack path findings into incident response playbooks, risk dashboards, and change management processes.
Align with industry benchmarks: Map results to frameworks such as MITRE ATT&CK for cloud, CIS Controls, and regulatory requirements to improve prioritization and reporting.
Adopt a risk-based prioritization approach: Not all attack paths are equally dangerous. Focus resources on paths that lead to critical assets or have realistic exploitation potential.
Foster collaboration between teams: IAM, network engineers, developers, and security operations should share context to close gaps efficiently.
Plan for multi-cloud realities: If you operate across AWS, Azure, and GCP, ensure the analysis spans all environments and accounts, with consistent remediation actions.
Maintain asset visibility: Regularly enumerate assets and dependencies so the graph remains accurate as the cloud environment evolves.

Case scenario: a typical cloud attack path (illustrative)

Consider a hypothetical enterprise running workloads in multiple cloud accounts. A developer inadvertently leaves a long-lived credential in a code repository. This credential is used to assume a role with broad permissions in a staging environment. From there, the attacker gains access to a database containing non-production data, and through a misconfigured analytics service, is able to query production data by leveraging a token with cross-account access. Wiz Attack Path Analysis would surface this sequence as a high-risk path, highlight the exact permissions and network edges involved, and quantify the blast radius if the path is exploited. The recommended actions would include rotating the credential, reducing the role’s permissions to the minimum necessary, tightening cross-account trust, and removing public access to the staging bucket. This example illustrates how detection, analysis, and targeted remediation work together to reduce risk in practical terms.

Wiz and multi-cloud considerations

Many organizations operate across several cloud providers. Wiz Attack Path Analysis is designed to reflect cross-cloud realities, including differences in IAM models, network constructs, and data services. The core goal remains consistent: map how access can flow from an initial foothold to sensitive assets, regardless of where those assets reside. When teams understand these cross-cloud paths, they can implement a cohesive set of controls—such as centralized secrets management, uniform access governance, and consistent logging—that reduce risk across the entire estate.

Conclusion

Attack path analysis is more than a diagnostic tool. With Wiz, it becomes a proactive guardrail that visualizes how misconfigurations and broad permissions can translate into real exposure. By translating cloud configurations into an actionable graph, security teams can prioritize fixes, accelerate remediation, and align cloud security with business objectives. The practical value lies in turning complex interconnections into clear risk signals and then following a disciplined path to reduce attack surfaces, one targeted change at a time.