Your A to Z Guide for Cybersecurity Terms
Professional organization that maintains standard controls & guidance for independent audits.
Suspicious activities on a network that could be a sign of a cyberattack.
This usually refers to a contingency plan that goes into play if critical systems go down.
Report on an organization's readiness to protect the data in its custody from unauthorized use.
Policy purchased to help reduce the financial risks of doing business online.
DLP stands for Data Loss Prevention.
Used to scramble and unscramble data, altering it to appear random and block access.
An endpoint is anything that is the starting or ending point of any communication on a computer.
The practice of authenticating and supervising the access rights of endpoint devices.
An intentional data breach.
A network security device that functions as a gatekeeper for network traffic access.
Also referred to as digital forensics or computer forensics.
Unauthorized attempts to exploit a private network or computer system.
A process that produces a numeric value or "hash value" to represents a set of data.
Stands for Information Security Office.
A new twist on a briefly popular form of ransomware called "doxware."
Stands for Managed Detection & Response.
Stands for Managed Security Service Provider.
Stands for the National Institute of Standards and Technology at the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Software programmed on a computer system as initial boot program.
Short for Penetration Testing or also known as "White Hat Hacking."
A socially engineered scam that prioritizes tricking a large quantity of its targets.
Physical security is integral to every organization's cybersecurity best practices.
RansomHub is a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) group that emerged in early 2024. It operates by providing ransomware to affiliates who conduct attacks, often using double extortion (stealing data before encryption and threatening to leak it). The group has quickly become prominent, attracting affiliates from defunct ransomware operations and targeting various sectors
Malware that encrypts a victim's files for extortion. Simply put, it's data kidnapping.
Also known as Cybersecurity Assessment. Used to understand cyber strengths, weaknesses, and gaps.
Stands for Security Information and Event Management
Stands for Security Operations Center. (SOC is pronounced "sock")
Stands for System and Organization Controls 2, Type I.
Stands for System and Organization Controls 2, Type II.
Stands for SOC-as-a-Service. SOC is short for Security Operations Center.
A socially engineered phishing scam that leverages text messages.
A socially engineered phishing scam that targets specific individuals or organizations.
The act of identifying previously unknown or ongoing, non-remedied threats within a network.
A multi-user and multi-tasking operating system (OS) originally developed in the 1970s.
A patch, upgrade, or modification to code that corrects software security or functionality.
A patch, upgrade, or modification to code that corrects software security or functionality.
XDR stands for eXtended Detection & Response
Zero Trust is governed by the principle to "never trust, always verify."
