Glossary
Cybersecurity & Technology Glossary
59 essential terms every cybersecurity professional, developer, and IT practitioner should know.
Cybersecurity(36 terms)
Access Control
Access control is a security technique that regulates who or what can view, use, or modify resources in a computing environment. It consists of two ma...
Authentication
Authentication is the process of verifying the identity of a user, device, or system. It confirms that someone or something is who they claim to be. C...
Authorization
Authorization is the process of determining what an authenticated user or system is allowed to do. While authentication verifies identity, authorizati...
Backdoor
A backdoor is a method of bypassing normal authentication or encryption in a computer system, application, or hardware device. Backdoors can be intent...
Breach
A security breach is an incident where unauthorized individuals gain access to data, systems, or networks. Breaches can result from various attack vec...
Brute Force
Brute force is an attack technique that systematically tries all possible combinations of passwords, keys, or parameters until the correct one is foun...
Buffer Overflow
A buffer overflow occurs when a program writes more data to a memory buffer than it can hold, causing excess data to overflow into adjacent memory loc...
CIA Triad
The CIA Triad is a fundamental model in information security consisting of three core principles: Confidentiality (ensuring information is accessible ...
Compliance
Compliance in cybersecurity refers to conforming to laws, regulations, standards, and policies that govern how organizations protect sensitive data. C...
Cryptography
Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adversarial third parties. It encompasses encryption ...
DDoS
A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack overwhelms a target system with traffic from multiple compromised sources, making it unavailable to legi...
Defense in Depth
Defense in depth is a security strategy that uses multiple layers of controls to protect assets. If one layer fails, additional layers provide continu...
Encryption
Encryption is the process of converting plaintext data into an unreadable format using mathematical algorithms and keys. Only authorized parties with ...
Exploit
An exploit is a piece of software, code, or technique that takes advantage of a vulnerability to cause unintended behavior in a system. Exploits can b...
Forensics
Digital forensics is the practice of collecting, analyzing, and preserving digital evidence for investigation and legal proceedings. It encompasses co...
Hardened
System hardening is the process of securing a system by reducing its attack surface. This involves removing unnecessary software, disabling unused ser...
Honeypot
A honeypot is a decoy system designed to attract and monitor unauthorized access attempts. It mimics a real system to lure attackers, allowing securit...
Incident Response
Incident response is the organized approach to identifying, managing, and resolving cybersecurity incidents. The incident response lifecycle includes:...
Insider Threat
An insider threat comes from individuals within an organization who have legitimate access to systems and data. Insiders may be malicious (deliberatel...
Log Analysis
Log analysis is the process of reviewing, interpreting, and understanding computer-generated records. Logs provide valuable information about system e...
Multi-Factor Authentication
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) requires users to provide two or more verification factors to gain access. Factors include something you know (passw...
Patch Management
Patch management is the process of acquiring, testing, and installing software updates (patches) to fix vulnerabilities, bugs, and improve functionali...
Penetration Testing
Penetration testing is an authorized, simulated cyberattack on a system, network, or application to identify security vulnerabilities. Pen testers fol...
Phishing
Phishing is a social engineering attack where criminals impersonate trusted entities to trick victims into revealing sensitive information. Variants i...
Privilege Escalation
Privilege escalation is the act of gaining elevated access to resources that are normally restricted. Vertical escalation involves moving from a lower...
Reconnaissance
Reconnaissance is the initial phase of a penetration test or attack where information about the target is gathered. Passive reconnaissance collects pu...
Risk Assessment
Risk assessment is the process of identifying, analyzing, and evaluating risks to organizational assets. It involves identifying threats and vulnerabi...
Sandbox
A sandbox is an isolated testing environment that allows code or programs to run without affecting the production system. Sandboxes are used for malwa...
Security Awareness
Security awareness is the knowledge and attitude of members of an organization regarding the protection of information assets. Security awareness trai...
SIEM
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) is a security solution that collects and analyzes log data from across an organization IT infrastruct...
Social Engineering
Social engineering is the psychological manipulation of people into performing actions or divulging confidential information. Attackers exploit human ...
SQL Injection
SQL injection (SQLi) is a web application vulnerability that allows attackers to interfere with database queries by inserting malicious SQL code into ...
Threat Intelligence
Threat intelligence is evidence-based knowledge about existing or emerging threats to assets. It includes information about attack techniques, threat ...
Vulnerability
A vulnerability is a weakness or flaw in a system, application, or process that could be exploited by a threat to compromise security. Vulnerabilities...
Zero Trust
Zero Trust is a security model that requires strict verification for every person and device trying to access resources, regardless of their location....
Zero-Day
A zero-day vulnerability is a security flaw unknown to the vendor or for which no patch exists. The term zero-day means developers have had zero days ...
Networking(7 terms)
DNS
The Domain Name System (DNS) translates human-readable domain names (like xpertclass.academy) into IP addresses that computers use to identify each ot...
Firewall
A firewall is a network security device or software that monitors, filters, and controls incoming and outgoing network traffic based on security rules...
IDS/IPS
Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) monitor network traffic or system activities for malicious activity and policy violations, generating alerts when su...
Intrusion Detection
Intrusion detection is the practice of monitoring network traffic or system activities for malicious activity or policy violations. Intrusion Detectio...
Network Security
Network security encompasses the policies, practices, and technologies used to protect computer networks and data from unauthorized access, misuse, an...
TLS/SSL
Transport Layer Security (TLS) and its predecessor Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) are cryptographic protocols that provide secure communication over compu...
VPN
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) creates an encrypted tunnel between a user device and a remote server, securing data in transit over public networks. ...
DevOps(9 terms)
API
An Application Programming Interface (API) defines how software components communicate with each other. APIs specify the methods, data formats, and pr...
Container
A container is a lightweight, standalone, executable unit of software that packages application code with its dependencies. Containers share the host ...
Container Security
Container security encompasses the practices and tools used to protect containerized applications throughout their lifecycle. This includes securing c...
Continuous Integration
Continuous Integration (CI) is a development practice where developers frequently merge code changes into a shared repository. Each integration is aut...
Incident Management
Incident management is the process of identifying, analyzing, and correcting hazards to prevent a future re-occurrence. In IT, it refers to the activi...
Infrastructure as Code
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is the practice of managing and provisioning computing infrastructure through machine-readable configuration files rather...
Microservices
Microservices is an architectural approach where an application is built as a collection of small, independent services that communicate through APIs....
Orchestration
Orchestration is the automated configuration, coordination, and management of computer systems and software. In the context of containers, orchestrati...
Regex
Regular expressions (regex) are sequences of characters that define search patterns. Regex is used for text matching, validation, and manipulation. In...
Cloud(3 terms)
Cloud Computing
Cloud computing delivers computing resources (servers, storage, databases, networking, software) over the internet on a pay-as-you-go basis. Major pro...
Load Balancer
A load balancer distributes incoming network traffic across multiple servers to ensure no single server becomes overwhelmed. It improves application a...
Serverless
Serverless computing is a cloud model where the provider dynamically manages server allocation and provisioning. Developers write and deploy code with...
Linux(4 terms)
Cron Job
A cron job is a time-based task scheduler in Unix/Linux systems that executes scripts or commands at specified intervals. Cron uses a syntax defining ...
Daemon
A daemon is a background process in Unix/Linux systems that runs without user interaction and performs specific tasks. Daemons typically start at boot...
Kernel
The kernel is the core component of an operating system that manages hardware resources and provides system services. It acts as a bridge between hard...
Sudo
Sudo (superuser do) is a Linux/Unix program that allows users to run commands with the security privileges of another user, typically the root user. S...