Learn about the commonly used terms in cybersecurity, their definitions, and abbreviations.
APTs are a dangerous threat for enterprises where the threat actor possesses a sophisticated level of expertise to continue for an extended period within the system or network without being identified. The target of this kind of threat would be data theft, so there is no damage to the company network. The typical modus operandi of advanced persistent threat is to access the network in several phases. The first is hacking into the network without being detected, planning the attack, mapping the data, and then stealing sensitive data. There is nothing accidental about this type of attack. It is highly customized and carefully planned.
Adversarial Exposure Validation Operations (AEVOps) is a security operations approach that continuously tests, validates, and measures an organization's real-world exposure using adversarial techniques just like attackers would. It brings together adversarial intelligence, automated exploit testing, and continuous validation workflows to determine whether critical vulnerabilities are actually exploitable in your environment, not just theoretically risky. AEVOps shifts security from "finding issues" to proving impact, so teams can prioritize what truly matters, reduce noise, and remediate based on validated attacker pathways rather than raw vulnerability counts.
Adversarial Intelligence is the discipline of collecting, analyzing, and understanding information about real-world attackers, their behaviors, tools, techniques, targets, and evolving tactics to anticipate how they will exploit weaknesses in your environment. Instead of focusing only on known vulnerabilities or generic threat feeds, adversarial intelligence maps who is likely to attack you, how they operate, what exploits they favor, and which exposures they can realistically use right now.
AI is the field of computer science focused on building systems that can perform tasks that normally require human intelligence such as understanding language, recognizing patterns, solving problems, learning from data, and making decisions. AI works by identifying patterns in large datasets and using those patterns to make predictions, generate content, or take actions. As it learns, it can improve its performance over time, enabling everything from simple automation to advanced reasoning and autonomous decision-making.
An AI agent is a system that not only processes input and generates output (like an LLM), but also takes action autonomously, possibly making decisions, using tools, or interacting with environments to achieve goals. These agents can plan, reason, and adapt over time, operating with some degree of independence from direct human control.
An AI model is a computational system that has been trained on data to perform specific tasks such as recognizing patterns, making predictions, generating outputs, or making decisions. It represents the learned relationships and patterns extracted from the training data and uses this knowledge to process new, unseen information. Essentially, an AI model is the "brain" of an AI system, enabling it to perform intelligent tasks based on learned experience rather than hard-coded instructions.
AI model poisoning is an attack where adversaries manipulate training data or input to degrade the performance of an AI system. Poisoned models may make incorrect decisions, fail to detect threats, or even amplify vulnerabilities. Organizations must validate data integrity, monitor model behavior, and implement robust defenses to prevent poisoning attacks. Protecting AI models is critical as they increasingly drive security decisions and operational automation.
Securin's standard that summarizes how LLMs and AI models, like ChatGPT, Grok, and DeepSeek, perform when tested against real-world adversarial threats. It provides a clear, easy-to-interpret "security report card" so organizations can understand AI risk before deployment.
AI workloads are the computational tasks and processes that artificial intelligence systems perform to accomplish their objectives. These workloads include training models on large datasets, running inference to generate predictions or outputs, and processing data to prepare it for AI use. AI workloads are distinct from standard IT workloads because they demand high computational power, large-scale data handling, and specialized optimization to ensure efficiency and accuracy.
An asset inventory is a comprehensive, continuously updated record of all hardware, software, cloud resources, and identities within an organization. Maintaining an accurate inventory is foundational to exposure management, vulnerability assessment, and risk prioritization. It allows security teams to understand what needs protection, track changes, and identify unknown or unmanaged assets that could be exploited.
Techniques used by hackers and threat actors to gain access and infiltrate into your system. The attack method used by threat actors can vary according to the technology, the intent, and the motive behind the attack. The most common types of attacks that threat actors use are Phishing, Malware (Ransomware, Trojan, Drive-by-attack), Web Attacks (Injections, Cross-site Scripting, Malicious file upload), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS), and Password Attack.
Attack path risk assesses how a vulnerability or misconfiguration could be leveraged by an attacker to reach critical assets. It considers the ease of exploitation, potential lateral movement, and privilege escalation opportunities. Mapping these paths helps organizations identify high-value chokepoints and implement controls to interrupt potential attacks. Reducing attack path risk minimizes the likelihood of full compromise.
Approach or methodology used by threat actors and hackers to exploit a vulnerability. Attack patterns are as diverse as the vulnerabilities that exist within a system or network. They leverage the inherent weakness that exists within its architecture to attack, exploit, and breach security to steal data and gain access.
An attack surface is a set of pathways through which an attacker attempts to enter or extract data from a system, system element, or environment to carry out a cyberattack. The attack surface can be of two types: physical and digital. A physical attack surface covers access to all endpoint devices such as desktops, mobile devices, laptops, USB ports, and improperly disposed hard drives. A digital attack surface includes the entirety of all vulnerabilities that exist in connected hardware and software.
ASM is the continuous discovery, inventory, classification, prioritization, and security monitoring of your digital ecosystem. With this complete view of your organization's digital ecosystem, one can discover the corresponding cyber risk associated with each vulnerability, quickly remediate any risk exposure, and help to increase the cybersecurity posture.
An attack vector is the specific path or method an attacker uses to infiltrate a system or network. Common vectors include phishing, exposed ports, weak credentials, and software vulnerabilities. Understanding attack vectors allows organizations to anticipate threats, strengthen defenses, and reduce opportunities for compromise. It also informs incident response planning by highlighting where attackers are likely to strike
This is a security measure designed to verify the user, process, or device identity as a precondition to allow access to confidential data or systems. Primarily, it is used to validate or authorize a user
Automated penetration testing involves using tools, often powered by AI, to simulate penetration testing (ethical hacking) in an automated, continuous way. Instead of manual red-teaming, automated pentesting tools scan, exploit, and report on vulnerabilities, accelerate feedback cycles reviewed by security professionals, and help maintain security posture as systems evolve
A backdoor is a type of undocumented vulnerability point that allows the threat actor to access the entity's asset by bypassing its security. At times, it is also created by developers to quickly obtain remote access and make changes to the code of the software.
In cybersecurity, a blindspot is an area, system, or activity within an organization's environment that goes unmonitored or is not fully visible to security teams, leaving it vulnerable to threats. Blindspots can occur in unmanaged devices, shadow IT, legacy systems, misconfigured cloud services, or overlooked network segments.
Behavior monitoring continuously monitors the operating system's unusual modifications or an installed program. It observes user's activities, information systems, processes, and measures them against organizational policies and rules. It is a fundamental approach to protect against unauthorized software and malware attacks by monitoring system areas for specific actions and also allow administrators to control programs that trigger such actions
A black hat hacker penetrates the network maliciously to expose vulnerabilities in systems and networks to discover sensitive information for personal gain.
Black box testing is a method of testing software that is performed without any knowledge of the system's implementation, structure, or design.
A blue team is a bunch of defenders who run an analysis, detect security flaws in information technology, check the effectiveness of security measures and execute defensive measures for future attacks. They constantly strengthen the security around and within the organization's data systems and networks. Usually, the blue team indicates the internal security team of an organization against the real attackers.
A botnet is a set of internet-connected devices infected by malware and controlled by an attacking party. Botnet owners can command and control the access to thousands of computers to carry out malicious activities. Common botnet actions include email spam, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and targeted intrusions.
A breach is an incident where an attacker successfully gains unauthorized access to data, systems, or exfiltrates or manipulates resources in a way that violates security policies or user trust. Breaches can lead to data loss, intellectual property theft, service disruption, reputational damage, and regulatory/legal consequences.
Buffer Overflow is a software weakness that occurs when a program writes more data into a memory buffer than it is designed to hold. Because the extra data spills into adjacent memory, it can overwrite critical information, crash the program, or allow attackers to run malicious code. In practice, buffer overflows are dangerous because they let an attacker manipulate program execution-often leading to full system compromise if not properly prevented through secure coding, bounds checking, and modern memory protections.
A bug or software error is a security defect that causes a program to deliver unexpected outputs or crash entirely. A malicious attacker can exploit a security bug to gain unauthorized access to the system. These bugs may affect application performance and developers will need to fix all identified bugs before deploying the next version of the application software.
A CISA KEV refers to a vulnerability listed in the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's KEV Catalog. This catalog includes only those vulnerabilities for which there is verified evidence of active exploitation by attackers in the wild. To be included in the KEV, a vulnerability must have an assigned CVE identifier, documented proof of real-world exploitation, and a publicly available remediation, such as a software patch. For federal civilian agencies, CISA's Binding Operational Directive 22‑01 requires accelerated remediation of all KEV-listed vulnerabilities, emphasizing the critical risk they pose. More broadly, organizations across both public and private sectors are strongly encouraged to monitor the KEV catalog and prioritize patching these high-risk vulnerabilities to reduce exposure to active threats.
In this type of phishing attack, a legitimate email from an individual or organization is replicated and sent to the target along with malicious links or viruses as attachments. In the target's inbox, it appears as a re-sent email. When the victim clicks on the attached link, it leads to the installation of malware or ransomware onto the systems. A phisher can use clone phishing to gain access to one of the organization's computing systems and then infect other systems.
A cloud is a platform that stores a large amount of information and data instead of a local server. Basically, the cloud serves as a remote sharing of files and data when provided with an internet connection.
A CVE is an alphanumeric ID assigned by the CVE Numbering Authority (CNA) to refer to a specific software or hardware vulnerability. Once the vulnerability is identified and analyzed, it is listed publicly in MITRE. Then, the information is updated to the National Vulnerability Database (NVD).
CVSS is a standard scoring scale of 0-10, which determines the severity and impact of prioritizing vulnerabilities. Vendors release patches and updates for vulnerabilities based on the given CVSS score. The following table presents its breakdown. Rating CVSS V3 Score Critical 9.0 - 10 High 7.0 - 8.9 Medium 4.0 - 6.9 Low 0.1 - 3.9
CWE is a global categorization system of weakness found in software and hardware vulnerabilities. Over 600 types of vulnerabilities are available in the source, which is maintained by MITRE corporation and sponsored by National Cybersecurity FFRDC. This process provides the users an understanding of the issues in their software and helps in the development of automated tools to identify, fix, and prevent these issues. Each of the CWE is classified with an ID and description that gives an overview of the vulnerability type. Some of the categorized vulnerabilities are buffer overflows, path/directory tree traversal errors, cross-site scripting, privilege escalation, and SQL injection.
Compliance involves meeting the requirements of various rules and regulations enacted by a regulatory authority to protect sensitive data. Compliance requirements vary based on industry and sector and comprise different organizational procedures and technologies to safeguard data. Organizations such as the Center for Internet Security (CIS), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) under the United States Commerce Department, and ISO 27001 establish cybersecurity compliance regulations.
Contextual risk scoring evaluates exposures based on technical severity, asset criticality, environmental factors, and threat intelligence. It provides a more realistic measure of the potential impact of an exposure than traditional scoring systems. This approach helps organizations prioritize remediation actions and allocate security resources effectively. Contextual scoring enables a risk-informed security strategy.
CTEM is a dynamic, ongoing approach to identifying, validating, prioritizing, and mitigating exposures. It leverages automation, AI, and threat intelligence to maintain an up-to-date view of organizational risk. CTEM helps teams adapt quickly to new vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, or attack vectors. By continuously managing exposure, organizations reduce the likelihood of successful attacks and maintain a proactive security posture
CTEM is a dynamic, ongoing approach to identifying, validating, prioritizing, and mitigating exposures. It leverages automation, AI, and threat intelligence to maintain an up-to-date view of organizational risk. CTEM helps teams adapt quickly to new vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, or attack vectors. By continuously managing exposure, organizations reduce the likelihood of successful attacks and maintain a proactive security posture
CSRF is a web security vulnerability in which an attacker tricks a user's browser into performing unwanted actions on a web application where the user is already authenticated. By exploiting the user's active session, the attacker can make the application execute actions-such as changing account settings, initiating transactions, or deleting data-without the user's knowledge or consent. CSRF vulnerabilities typically arise when applications fail to properly verify that requests are intentionally initiated by the authenticated user.
XSS is a web security vulnerability that occurs when an application allows attackers to inject malicious scripts into web pages viewed by other users. These scripts can steal sensitive information like cookies or session tokens, manipulate the content displayed to the user, or perform actions on behalf of the user without their consent. XSS vulnerabilities typically arise from improper input validation or insufficient output encoding, and they can affect both the security and trustworthiness of a website or web application.
Cyber resilience is an organization's ability to anticipate, withstand, recover from, and adapt to cyberattacks. It combines people, processes, and technology to maintain operations during disruptions. Strong resilience ensures that critical business functions continue, minimizing operational and financial impact. It is a key goal for modern security programs.
A Distributed Denial of Service(DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the regular functioning of a computer network, service, or website by overwhelming it with a flood of traffic from multiple sources. This flood of incoming data or requests exhausts the target's resources, rendering it temporarily or entirely unavailable to legitimate users.
A disaster recovery plan is a documented strategy that outlines how an organization will restore its critical IT systems, applications, and data after a disruptive event, such as a cyberattack, natural disaster, or system failure. The plan defines the procedures for recovering data, reestablishing operations, and communicating with stakeholders, ensuring that downtime and data loss are minimized. Its purpose is to help the organization quickly return to normal functioning and maintain business continuity despite unexpected disruptions.
The digital attack surface is the total number of security vulnerabilities found outside the firewall that can be accessed through the internet. The possible entry points of vulnerabilities are unnecessary open ports, poor email security, code, servers, and websites.
The merged processes of Development, Security, and Operations are collectively referred to as DevSecOps. It is the practice of continuously implementing automated security within the development and operations stages of an application. It aims to optimize the entire app life cycle, secure codes and eliminate vulnerabilities, and ensure faster product delivery by integrating information security from development to deployment.
A type of cyberattack aimed at disrupting the normal functioning of a computer system, network, or online service through overwhelming the target with an excessive amount of traffic, requests, or data.
Deepfake is the type of artificial intelligence used to fabricate one's existing video or picture to resemble someone else. This type of visual and audio content manipulation is potentially achieved with the techniques of machine learning. The methods used to create deepfakes are rooted from deep learning and guidance from generative neural network architectures, such as autoencoders or generative adversarial networks.
The deep web is all parts of the internet that are not indexed by standard search engines, meaning they cannot be found through a simple Google search. This includes private databases, subscription-based content, internal corporate networks, academic journals, and other sites that require authentication or special access. While much of the deep web is legitimate and used for everyday purposes, it remains hidden from public view.
A data moat is a strategic advantage a company gains by possessing exclusive, hard-to-replicate datasets that competitors cannot easily access. These unique datasets allow the organization to build better AI models, make more informed decisions, or offer superior products and services. The term "moat" is metaphorical, suggesting that just as a moat protects a castle from invaders, proprietary data protects a company's market position and long-term competitiveness.
Data loss occurs when sensitive information on a computer is exploited due to theft, human error, viruses, malware, or power failure. This includes laptop theft, accidental deletion, overwriting of files, power outages and surges, spilled liquids, and sudden failure of hard drives.
Data leakage is the illegitimate transmission of data from an organization to a peripheral recipient. These threats usually occur electronically or physically through mobile data storage devices such as optical media, USB keys, and laptops.
A data fabric is an integrated architecture and set of technologies that provide a unified, seamless layer for accessing, managing, and sharing data across an organization, regardless of where the data is stored: on-premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid environments. It enables organizations to connect disparate data sources, ensure consistent data governance and security, and support real-time analytics and insights. Essentially, a data fabric makes all organizational data easier to discover, access, and use for decision-making, AI, and other applications.
A data breach is a security intrusion in which secure and confidential data such as Personal Health Information (PHI), Personally identifiable information (PII), trade secrets of organizations, intellectual property, and financial data gets released to the unauthorized environment. The data leak or unauthorized access may be due to the incautious disposal of used computer equipment and data storage media.
The dark web is a small, intentionally hidden portion of the deep web that is accessible only through specialized tools. It is often associated with anonymity and encrypted communications, and while it has legitimate uses for privacy-conscious individuals and organizations, it is also known for hosting illegal activities such as illicit marketplaces, hacking forums, and the trade of stolen data.
The external attack surface includes all systems, services, applications, and endpoints exposed to the internet or other public networks. These are the points attackers can reach without prior access to internal networks. Monitoring and reducing the external attack surface helps organizations prevent reconnaissance, unauthorized access, and initial compromise. Regularly assessing this surface is critical as cloud, API, and remote work environments evolve.
Sensitive data (passwords, keys, personal data) is exposed to code paths, logs, or systems that should not have access to it. This leakage can compromise confidentiality.
Exposure management is a comprehensive approach to identifying, assessing, prioritizing, and reducing cyber exposures across an entire digital ecosystem. It brings together vulnerability data, misconfigurations, identity risks, cloud issues, and attack surface insights into a unified view. XM helps organizations move from reactive remediation to proactive risk governance. It also aligns security actions with business priorities, improving overall resilience.
The sequence from an exposure's creation to its discovery, prioritization, remediation, and validation. Understanding this lifecycle helps teams close exposures faster and prevent reoccurrence.
An exposure is any condition, weakness, misconfiguration, or asset that could potentially be exploited by an attacker to compromise an organization's systems, data, or operations. Exposures represent points of risk, even if they have not yet been actively attacked, and can exist in software, hardware, cloud environments, networks, or user behavior.
An exploit chain is a sequence of vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, or attack steps that an adversary can combine to escalate privileges or gain deeper access. Individually, each vulnerability may seem low risk, but when chained together, they can create a high-impact attack path. Mapping exploit chains helps security teams identify critical vulnerabilities and implement controls to break potential attack sequences. This approach highlights systemic weaknesses rather than isolated issues, improving overall resilience.
Exploitability measures how easily a vulnerability can be leveraged by an attacker to compromise a system. It considers factors such as required skill, access level, available tools, and exploit complexity. Higher exploitability increases urgency for remediation and monitoring. Evaluating exploitability helps organizations prioritize exposures that are more likely to be targeted in real-world attacks.
An exploit refers to any piece of code designed to take advantage of security flaws or software vulnerabilities. These codes are typically written by security researchers as a proof of concept or crafted by threat actors for malicious operations. Exploits enable attackers to gain elevated access to a network and can help them to move laterally to compromise an organization's entire IT infrastructure. Common exploits include SQL Injection, Cross-Site Scripting, and Cross-Site Request Forgery.
Encryption is the process of converting information, or a message referred to as plaintext, into a problematic unreadable form called ciphertext by using an encryption algorithm.
A firewall is a network security device that monitors incoming and outgoing network traffic. It is the first line of defense in cybersecurity and acts as a barrier between a private and trusted network and an untrusted source (such as the Internet). Based on structure and functionality, firewalls can be of different types.
Grey hat or Gray hat is a computer security expert who violates laws or common ethical principles but does not have the malicious intent typical of a black hat hacker. They have similar intentions as white hats to maintain secure systems but without permissions.
In cybersecurity, a gap refers to a weakness, deficiency, or missing element in an organization's security posture that can leave it vulnerable to attacks. Gaps can exist in technology, processes, policies, or personnel skills, and they represent areas where current security measures fail to adequately protect assets, data, or operations.
A hacker is an individual who breaks through the security of a network or system to sneak data, corrupt systems or files, capture the environment or disrupt data-related activities by the phishing scam, spooking, trojan horse, vulnerability scanning, viruses, etc. Ethical hackers, on the contrary, are employed by organizations to prevent malicious infections.
The internal attack surface encompasses systems, applications, and data accessible once an attacker has gained initial access to the network. It includes endpoints, servers, databases, and privileged accounts that facilitate lateral movement and escalation. Mapping this surface helps organizations identify chokepoints where attacks could spread internally. Reducing internal exposure through segmentation, least privilege, and monitoring limits potential damage if an attacker breaches perimeter defenses.
Incident management is a service management region that gets activated when an incident has occurred. The key objective is to rebuild the normal service operations at the earliest possible time. Incidents include disruptions reported by users, by technical staff, or automatically detected and reported by event monitoring tools. When incidents are reported, the incident management process attempts to understand the impact and urgency of the incident to perform accordingly.
An incident is an act of violating an organization's security policy to affect its integrity, information systems, services or networks, and sensitive information by unauthorized access. It results in adverse outcomes to the information that the system possesses, which requires a response action to mitigate the consequences. The incident can be security issues, application bugs, data issues, system down, server problems, etc.
Improper Authentication is a security weakness that occurs when a system fails to correctly verify the identity of a user, device, or application before granting access. This flaw can allow attackers to bypass login controls, impersonate legitimate users, or gain unauthorized access to sensitive data and systems. Improper authentication often arises from weak password policies, predictable tokens, flawed session management, or insufficient verification mechanisms, making it a critical risk in software and network security.
Identity and access exposure refers to weaknesses in authentication, authorization, or privilege assignments. Improperly managed accounts, stale permissions, or weak credentials can allow attackers to assume identities or escalate privileges. Reducing exposure requires strong identity governance, multi-factor authentication, and least-privilege policies. Securing identities is foundational to limiting attacker movement.
JavaScript Injection is a type of cyberattack in which an attacker inserts malicious JavaScript code into a vulnerable web application. When unsuspecting users access the affected page, the injected script executes in their browser, potentially allowing the attacker to steal sensitive information, manipulate content, hijack sessions, or redirect users to malicious websites. This type of attack is often a form of Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), and it typically exploits weaknesses in input validation or output encoding within web applications.
Keylogger is a sneaky type of spyware that records and steals consecutive PC activity that the user enters on a device. They are not always illicit to install and use. It is a common tool for corporations wherein the information technology is used to troubleshoot technical problems on their systems and networks or to keep an eye on employees secretively. It can record online conversations, e-mails, password logins, screenshots, web pages that you view, as well as sensitive financial information.
Lateral movements are techniques used by high-tech cyber-attacker to gradually step laterally through a network seeking targeted critical data and assets. This methodology additionally requires the credentials of the user account. In this type of attack, the threat actors get access to the domain controller and provide control of windows-based infrastructure, which involves better strategies and evade detection. To mitigate lateral movement attacks, security analysts can create internal network intelligence to know which users and devices are on a network and standard login patterns to identify when credential misuse occurs.
LLM security focuses on protecting AI language models from misuse, data leakage, and adversarial manipulation. Threats include prompt injection, malicious training data, and exploitation of generated outputs. Ensuring LLM security involves monitoring, access control, validation, and continuous model evaluation. As organizations adopt LLMs for automation and decision-making, securing these systems becomes a key component of cyber resilience.
LLMs are a type of AI model, typically based on deep learning, that are trained on massive amounts of text data to understand and generate human-like language. They power applications like chatbots, content generation, translation, and can also be used to automate tasks.
An MCP server enables AI agents to securely interact with external tools, data sources, and systems. It acts as a controlled interface, validating requests from AI models, executing the requested actions, and returning results in a structured and safe manner. By standardizing these interactions, MCP servers allow AI agents to perform complex tasks beyond simple text generation, such as querying databases, invoking APIs, or manipulating system resources. They also enforce governance and security policies, ensuring that AI actions are authenticated, authorized, and auditable.
The MITRE ATT&CK Matrix is a globally recognized, continuously updated framework that categorizes and describes the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by real-world cyber attackers. Developed by MITRE, it provides a structured view of the full lifecycle of an attack, from initial access to data exfiltration, organized into columns of tactics (the attacker's objective) and rows of techniques and sub‑techniques (how the attacker achieves that objective).
Misconfiguration risk arises when systems, applications, or cloud services are improperly set up, leaving them vulnerable to attack. Examples include overly permissive access controls, exposed endpoints, or default credentials. Misconfigurations are a leading cause of breaches because they are easy for attackers to exploit. Regular audits, monitoring, and automated configuration checks help mitigate this risk.
Malware is used to hide the hacker's footprints within the system, and it also aids the attacker to control their access remotely and identify the data they wish to steal.
Malicious code is a system code or web script intended to cause undesired vulnerabilities, application backdoor, security breaches or damage to a system, and potential data loss. Unfortunately, all types of codes cannot be detected by anti-virus applications on their own. Malicious code takes the form of Java Applets, ActiveX Controls, Scripting languages, Browser plug-ins, and Pushed content. Malicious code can give a user remote access to a computer known as an application backdoor.
Machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence in which computer systems learn to recognize patterns, make decisions, or predict outcomes from data without being explicitly programmed for each task. Instead of following predefined rules, machine learning models improve their performance over time by analyzing large datasets and adjusting their internal parameters based on experience. This allows them to handle complex problems, adapt to changing conditions, and generate insights that might be difficult for humans to identify.
Securin's proposed framework for AI regulation and adoption. The eight unified pillars of the NAGIVATE framework gives organizations a structure within which they can adopt AI responsibility, security and effectively, without needing to reinvent the wheel: Nurture, Assess, Validate, Implement, Govern, Adopt, Train, Evolve
Network resilience is the capability of the network to defend, maintain a level of service in rapid recovery when failures occur, and meet unpredictable demands. To increase resilience, the possible challenges and risks must be identified, and proper resilience measures should be defined.
An outsider threat is an unauthorized group or individual who seeks and obtains access to sensitive information of the organization rather than the security team. The rate of external attackers is high for an organization that includes well-funded hackers, organized crime groups, etc. The primary objective of outsider threat is cyber espionage, where they spy the protected data and confidential information.
A specific type of buffer overflow where memory is written outside the allocated bounds, which can corrupt data, crash programs, or allow an attacker to inject malicious code.
Privilege escalation increases the level of access to system resources attained by exploiting a vulnerability in the system. The exploitation of a programming error, vulnerability, flaw, access control in an operating system, or application to gain unauthorized access that is restricted from the application or user is described as privilege escalation. There are two types of privilege escalation, such as horizontal privilege escalation and vertical privilege escalation. Horizontal privilege escalation - a threat actor develops privileges by taking over another account and misusing the legal privileges granted to the other user. Vertical privilege escalation- a threat actor attempts to acquire more permissions or access with an existing account that has been compromised.
A plain text password is a password that is stored, transmitted, or displayed in an unencrypted, readable format. Unlike hashed or encrypted passwords, plain text passwords can be easily viewed by anyone who gains access to the system, file, or network where they are stored.
When an attacker uncovers security vulnerabilities by obtaining physical access to the system or device through the server rooms or office devices, the total number of weaknesses found through physical access is known as the physical attack surface.
PII is any data that can be used, alone or in combination with other information, to uniquely identify, contact, or locate a specific individual. Examples include names, addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, email addresses, and biometric data. PII is considered sensitive because if it is exposed or misused, it can lead to identity theft, fraud, or other privacy violations, and organizations that handle it are often legally required to protect it.
PHI is any information about an individual's health status, healthcare provision, or payment for healthcare that can be used to identify that person. This includes medical records, lab results, diagnoses, treatment histories, insurance information, and even conversations between patients and healthcare providers. PHI is protected by laws like HIPAA in the United States, which require organizations to safeguard it against unauthorized access, use, or disclosure.
Penetration testing is a cybersecurity test performed by the security team to attack against your computer system to analyze for exploitable vulnerabilities. It is best to have a penetration test done by security experts because they may be able to expose blind spots undetected by the developers who built it. The penetration test is performed by the contractors referred to as ethical hackers. The penetration tester runs several tests based around network penetration, penetration methods, and complete assessment reports about what they have revealed.
A passive attack is a type of cyber-attack where the threat actor simply observes the network activity as a part of surveillance. A passive attacker aims to obtain information that is transmitted. They are not easily detected because threat actors do not actively attack any target machine or participate in network traffic. They can also monitor every single message or data that is sent or received in the communication, but they cannot modify the original message.
A patch is an update to software, firmware, or an operating system that fixes security vulnerabilities, bugs, or other flaws. Patches are released by software vendors to address weaknesses that could be exploited by attackers to gain unauthorized access, disrupt services, or compromise data.
Quantum-Resistant Encryption
Quantum computing is a type of computing that uses the principles of quantum mechanics, such as superposition, entanglement, and interference, to process information in fundamentally different ways than classical computers. Unlike traditional bits, which can represent either 0 or 1, quantum bits or qubits can represent 0, 1, or both simultaneously, allowing quantum computers to perform certain calculations much faster and more efficiently. This makes them particularly powerful for tasks like factoring large numbers, simulating complex physical systems, optimizing large datasets, and solving certain problems that are infeasible for classical computers.
Risk governance defines the policies, processes, and oversight structures guiding how an organization manages cybersecurity risk. It ensures accountability, alignment with business objectives, and consistent risk management practices. Governance encompasses decision-making, reporting, and strategic planning to reduce organizational exposure. Strong risk governance supports both compliance and proactive security.
Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (RBVM) is a cybersecurity strategy in which a risk-based approach is adopted to prioritize remediation and reduce vulnerabilities across the attack surface. RBVM uses machine learning to map asset criticality, vulnerability severity, and threat actor activity. It assesses vulnerability risks by threat context and provides insight about the potential business impact for each threat identified. Through this process, companies and organizations can track their cyber resilience and get solutions to improve their security posture.
Remediation Operations refers to the processes, workflows, and actions taken to fix or mitigate identified security vulnerabilities, exposures, or misconfigurations within an organization's systems. These operations involve validating the risk, prioritizing which issues to address first, applying patches or configuration changes, and verifying that the remediation is effective. Rem Ops ensures that vulnerabilities do not remain unaddressed, reducing the likelihood of exploitation by attackers.
A remediation workflow is a structured process for addressing identified vulnerabilities or exposures. It defines responsibilities, timelines, verification steps, and escalation paths. Well-designed workflows ensure that fixes are applied consistently, validated for effectiveness, and tracked for accountability. Effective remediation workflows help organizations reduce dwell time and improve overall security hygiene.
Remediation is the process of identifying, fixing, and mitigating security vulnerabilities, exposures, or weaknesses within an organization's systems, networks, or applications. It involves taking corrective actions such as applying patches, updating configurations, strengthening access controls, or removing malicious software to reduce risk and prevent exploitation.
A red team is a group of ethical hackers who attack your layered security controls while your blue team defends it. Their objectives are to discover and exploit the weakness in the organization's security. A red team emulates the adversary's attack against the organization's security posture.
RaaS is a business model in the cybercriminal ecosystem where ransomware developers provide their ransomware tools, infrastructure, or platforms to other attackers (affiliates) in exchange for a share of profits. It dramatically lowers the bar for entry into ransomware attacks, enabling less technical attackers to launch sophisticated campaigns.
Ransomware is a malicious virus that disrupts the user's computer or server by installing itself and then accessing the sensitive information. Once installed, it displays a message that demands a ransom for the retrieval. There are several different categories of ransomware, including: 1. The encryptors that block access to data and applications by encrypting devices. 2. Lockers are the ones that block access to a computer system. 3. Scareware claims to discover other malware like viruses on your computer and then demands money to get rid of them. 4. Doxware that robs sensitive information from your computer and threatens to release it.
State threat actors are individuals or groups sponsored, directed, or supported by a government to conduct cyber operations, espionage, or attacks against other nations, organizations, or critical infrastructure. These actors typically have substantial resources, advanced tools, and strategic objectives, such as gathering intelligence, disrupting systems, or influencing political and economic outcomes. Unlike ordinary cybercriminals, state threat actors operate with long-term goals and often target high-value or sensitive information.
An SQL injection (Query Injection) stands for Structured Query Language, a web hacking technique where the attacker injects SQL statements that can read or modify the database. With advanced SQL Injection attacks, the hackers use SQL commands to write arbitrary files to the server and even execute operating system commands. Therefore, a successful SQL injection leads to serious business outcomes, involving data loss, information disclosure, and significant financial implications.
Spyware is software that collects information about an individual or organization without their knowledge. Using spyware, sensitive or confidential information can be sent to another destination for malicious purposes.
Spear phishing is a phishing attack against a well-researched target to obtain sensitive data, such as financial credentials or personal identification information, and gain access to the target's computer system. In spear phishing, threat actors pretend to be trustworthy entities and reach out to the target through email, text, or instant message.
Shift Left is a unique approach to security testing and involves early testing during the Software Development Life Cycle. The primary intention of shift left testing is to detect security defects or vulnerabilities in the initial stage, and thereby rectify and improve the quality and security of the software. It aims to reduce any negative outcome and help deploy the application or software at the scheduled time.
Shadow IT is all systems, applications, or services that are used within an organization without the knowledge, approval, or oversight of the IT department. These can include cloud applications, SaaS tools, personal devices, or software that employees adopt outside formal IT governance. Shadow IT introduces significant security risks because these systems may be unmonitored, improperly configured, or lack the necessary security controls.
Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF), a web security vulnerability in which the attacker induces the server to create a connection back to itself, or to other web-based services within the organization's infrastructure, or to external third-party systems. The target application is capable of importing data from an URL, deploying data to a URL, or otherwise interpreting data from a URL that can be tampered with.
Security posture is the overall state of an organization's cybersecurity defenses, policies, and practices at a given point in time. It represents how effectively the organization can prevent, detect, and respond to cyber threats. Security posture takes into account factors such as the strength of network and system controls, the effectiveness of vulnerability management, the readiness of incident response procedures, and the overall security awareness of employees. A strong security posture indicates that an organization is resilient to attacks, while a weak security posture signals a higher risk of breaches and data loss.
It is the machine-based execution of security tasks with the power to detect, investigate, and remediate cyber threats with or without human intervention by identifying incoming risks, triaging and prioritizing alerts as they emerge, and responding to them in a timely fashion.
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is the cloud-based software that delivers services to organizations without the need to purchase the application, server, or platform. SaaS providers offer business services such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), billing, and sales.
A Trojan horse code is malware that deceives users of its real intent. They penetrate your network to gain access to your system in the future. They sit silently in your computer, gathering information or setting up holes in your security, or they may seize your computer and lock you out.
Threat intelligence is actionable information about adversaries, attack methods, malware campaigns, and emerging risks. It informs security decisions by providing context about what threats are active, how they operate, and which assets are at risk. Threat intelligence enables organizations to anticipate attacks, prioritize defenses, and improve incident response. It can be derived from internal telemetry, open-source feeds, or commercial intelligence providers.
A threat is a possible event or circumstance that might exploit a vulnerability to violate an organization's security protocols. A threat can be intentional (individual hacker or an illegal organization) or accidental (malfunctioning or of a natural disaster).
TTPs are the behavioral patterns and methods used by cyber attackers as they plan, execute, and evolve their operations. Tactics represent the attacker's high‑level goals such as gaining initial access, escalating privileges, or exfiltrating data. Techniques describe the specific ways attackers achieve those goals, like spear‑phishing, credential dumping, or lateral movement. Procedures go even deeper, referring to the detailed, step‑by‑step implementations of a technique, which can vary from one threat actor to another.
Unknown asset identification is the process of discovering assets that are unmanaged, forgotten, or misconfigured. These can include legacy systems, abandoned servers, or untracked cloud resources. Identifying these assets is critical because attackers often exploit unknown targets that lack monitoring or security controls. Continuous inventory and discovery practices reduce blind spots and improve overall attack surface visibility.
Unauthorized access refers to a person who obtains access to a website, program, server, service, or any confidential information of any other user without their concern. Some set up alarms when authorized access attempts to interrupt, which helps prevent hackers from gaining access.
Vulnerability management is a set of processes that help identify and classify all weaknesses in your software, systems, and networks and then mitigate them by implementing security measures. Vulnerability scanning is a proactive process under the vulnerability management of software, to analyze the possible vulnerabilities such as insecure configurations.
Vulnerability intelligence provides context-rich information about vulnerabilities, including how they work, their severity, exploitability, and whether they are actively being exploited in the wild. It goes beyond basic vulnerability lists to incorporate threat activity, asset criticality, and environmental context. This intelligence allows teams to prioritize remediation effectively and make informed decisions about risk mitigation. It also supports proactive defenses, including patching, configuration changes, and compensating controls.
A vulnerability assessment is an organized analysis of security weaknesses in computer networks, systems, hardware, applications, and other parts of the IT network. It usually leverages tools like vulnerability and protocol scanners to identify threats and flaws within an organization's IT infrastructure and prioritize risks for potential remediation in the proper context.
Vulnerability is a weakness or flaw or fault in the system which can be exposed to an attacker. Vulnerabilities can allow attackers to gain unauthorized access and run code, enter a system's memory, install malware, steal, destroy, or modify sensitive data. Employees can protect computer systems from vulnerabilities by updating software security patches up to date. Vulnerabilities can be exploited by methods such as SQL injection, buffer overflows, and cross-site scripting (XSS).
A virus is a malicious software which consists of codes attached to the legitimate programs. When the program starts to run, the virus begins to spread all over the computer files without user knowledge. Viruses also circulate through shared media, such as Universal Serial Bus (USB) drives. Installing anti-virus software prevents, stops, or eliminates previously installed viruses.
In cybersecurity, validation is the process of verifying that security controls, configurations, or remediation actions are effective and functioning as intended. It involves testing, monitoring, or auditing systems to ensure that vulnerabilities have been properly addressed, exposures are mitigated, and defenses are working correctly. Validation ensures that security efforts are not only implemented but are also effective in maintaining a strong security posture.
The white hat is an individual who intrudes into systems and networks at the demand of their organization or with explicit permission to determine how secure it is against illegal attackers.
Weakness chaining is the process by which an attacker exploits multiple vulnerabilities or weaknesses (CWE) in a system in a sequential or combined manner to achieve a larger, more impactful attack. Individually, each weakness might appear low-risk or difficult to exploit, but when chained together, they can create a path that allows unauthorized access, privilege escalation, or data exfiltration.
An XML External Entity attack is a type of web security vulnerability where the attack against an application that parses XML input. This attack ensues when XML input containing a reference to an external entity is processed by a delicately configured XML parser. By leveraging the XXE vulnerability to perform server-side request forgery (SSRF) attacks, an attacker can accelerate an XXE attack to compromise the underlying server or other back-end infrastructure. This attack may lead to the disclosure of private data, denial of service, server-side request forgery, port scanning from the viewpoint of the machine where the parser is located, and additional system impacts.
In the cyber-attacks world, a zero-day is the day when a vulnerability is discovered before the vendor has become aware of it. At that point, no patch exists, so threat actors can easily exploit the vulnerability knowing that no protections are in place. This makes zero-day vulnerabilities a severe security threat. After some days, letting the vulnerability to be patched, the assessment report is published, and a CVE number is assigned. Cybersecurity Glossary \| Securin