the cyber kill chain is a framework created by lockheed martin in 2011 to map out the phases of a
cyberattack
the term kill chain originally comes from the military and describes the systematic steps
used to identify, track, and destroy an enemy target on a battlefield
it relies heavily on sequential steps - if a defender successfully disrupts just one early
phase (like blocking a phishing email during delivery), the entire attack fails
the first two stages usually happen entirely outside the target's network, meaning defenders are
practically blind to the very beginning of this process