Most vulnerability programs are built around lists. You run scans, sort by CVSS score, and patch the ones marked red. It works in theory — until you realize there are hundreds or thousands of “critical” issues across your environment. No team can get through them all. And worse, not all of them pose real risk.

Alex Bazay shared how his team ran into this problem early:

“If we go back 10 years ago, we were all using Qualys, Nessus… our approach was like: let’s scan everything, get the report, and attack whatever the most critical and high-level vulnerabilities were, right? Great concept — it stopped working pretty much immediately. Because if you get a 55-page report, you simply don’t have time to attack everything.”

The solution? Add context. Ask:

• Where is the vulnerability?
• Can an attacker even reach it?
• Is this asset actually important?
  
  

That shift from raw data to meaningful prioritization is what paved the way for attack path mapping.

Security teams often treat vulnerabilities as disconnected issues. But attackers don’t work that way. They think in steps — how to go from one low-value system to something more useful. That’s what makes attack path mapping such a powerful idea: it shows how multiple small exposures can chain together into a real threat.

Michelangelo Sidagni captured it perfectly:
“Attackers think in graphs. Defenders think in lists.”

Say you have a low-risk machine with a minor vulnerability — no big deal, right? But what if that machine also has an exposed port, weak credentials, and access to your internal tools? That’s no longer a low-risk issue. That’s a beachhead.
With attack path mapping, you see how that single system connects to others. You see where lateral movement could happen. And suddenly, that “low” finding becomes your top priority.

The beauty of attack path mapping is that it doesn’t just tell you what is vulnerable — it shows you how the whole environment fits together. That includes:

• Which vulnerabilities are actually reachable
• Where privilege escalation could happen
• What firewall or segmentation gaps exist
• Which user accounts could help an attacker move

That kind of insight helps security teams stop guessing. It helps them act with confidence. As Rob Johnson put it:
“It helps us understand how big the fire is so we can have the fire trucks rolling upfront.”

And when a new zero-day drops, you’re not scrambling. You’re checking if it actually touches any known attack paths. If it doesn’t, maybe you don’t need to panic. If it does, now you know exactly where to respond.

During the webinar, the group also discussed where attack path mapping is headed — and it’s not stopping at visualization.

The future is emulation — actually simulating how an attacker would try to move through your systems. That means stress-testing your defenses without needing a full red team. And when AI enters the picture, that process becomes faster, smarter, and less dependent on deep manual analysis.

Imagine your platform identifying a risky path, then recommending a fix in plain English:
 “Block port 3389 on asset X or adjust this firewall rule — it will close 4 out of 5 exposed paths to your domain controller.”

That’s not just powerful — that’s usable.

Here’s the bottom line: you don’t need to fix every vulnerability.

You need to fix the ones that actually expose something.

The ones attackers can see.

The ones that give them a way in — or a way across.

Attack path mapping helps you figure that out.

It turns endless lists into clear priorities. It turns unknown risk into specific actions. And it gives your security team — and your leadership — the confidence that you’re focused on the right things.