The memory path is the route data takes between the processor and system memory. It includes the electrical, logical, and hardware layers involved in moving reads and writes to and from RAM. Security teams care about this path because the CPU can only trust what it receives if the path itself is trustworthy.
In attacks, the memory path can be targeted with bus tampering, faulty hardware inserts, or other physical interference that changes what the processor sees, including stale or altered data. In defenses, protecting the memory path means more than encrypting data: it also means controlling physical access, validating hardware, monitoring platform integrity, and designing systems that assume the path may be observed or disturbed. In confidential computing, this layer is especially important because data is protected while in use, when the processor must still rely on memory access being correct.