Cyber Security Glossary

Find definitions for IT security and compliance in our online glossary of key terms, acronyms, and vocabulary.

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  • Term
    Definition
  • To search or ask. In the context of online computing, this often refers to the process of requesting information in a search engine, index directory, or database. 
  • "A socio-political process by which groups are ascribed a racial identity, whether or not members of the group self-identify as such"
  • Random Access Memory is the short-term memory that provides working space into which application programs can be loaded and executed and for the computer to work with data within. Information stored in RAM typically is lost when the device is turned off. 
  • "a type of machine learning that sorts data in a relevant order[; often used by companies] to optimize search and recommendations."
  • Evidence afforded by the production of physical objects for inspection or other examination by the court. 
  • "Response functions created by linear regression algorithms are probably the most popular, accountable, and transparent class of machine learning models. These models will be referred to here as linear and monotonic. They are transparent because changing any given input feature (or sometimes a(...)
  • "A metric for classification models; identifies the frequency with which a model correctly classifies the true positive items."
  • "the automatic discovery of regularities in data through the use of computer algorithms and with the use of these regularities to take actions such as classifying the data into different categories."
  • "A software tool and techniques that provide suggestion based on the customer's taste to discover new appropriate thing for them by filtering personalized information based on the user's preferences from a large volume of information"
  • Information, regardless of medium or format that has value to an organization. Collectively the term is used to describe both documents and electronically stored information.
  • A records custodian is an individual responsible for the physical storage and protection of records throughout their retention period. In the context of electronic records, custodianship may not be a direct part of the records management function in all organizations. 
  • The time period from when a record is created until it is disposed. 
  •  See Legal Hold.
  •  Records Management is the planning, controlling, directing, organizing, training, promoting and other managerial activities involving the lifecycle of information, including creation, Records Retention Period, Retention Period: The length of time a given records series must be kept,(...)
  • A plan for the management of records, listing types of records and how long they should be kept; the purpose is to provide continuing authority to dispose of or transfer records to historical archives. 
  • Definition: The activities after an incident or event to restore essential services and operations in the short and medium term and fully restore all capabilities in the longer term.
  • "An individual’s right to have personal data about them corrected or amended by a business or other organization if it is inaccurate."
  • "the creation and maintenance of technology practices that further entrench discriminatory practices against already marginalized groups."
  • Definition: A group authorized and organized to emulate a potential adversary’s attack or exploitation capabilities against an enterprise’s cybersecurity posture. Related Term(s): Blue Team, White Team
  • "A group of people authorized and organized to emulate a potential adversary’s attack or exploitation capabilities against an enterprise’s security posture. The Red Team’s objective is to improve enterprise cybersecurity by demonstrating the impacts of successful attacks and by demonstrating(...)
  • Definition: An exercise, reflecting real-world conditions, that is conducted as a simulated attempt by an adversary to attack or exploit vulnerabilities in an enterprise's information systems.Related Term(s): cyber exercise
  • Definition: Additional or alternative systems, sub-systems, assets, or processes that maintain a degree of overall functionality in case of loss or failure of another system, sub-system, asset, or process.
  • "A class which is intended to describe structure and behavior of object identifiers. Its instances, called references, are passed by-value and indirectly represent objects by substituting for some primitive reference."
  • "A form of critical thinking that prompts us to consider the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of research, critically questioning the utility, ethics, and value of what, whom, and how we study"
  • "Regression is a process of predicting the value to a yes or no label provided it falls on a continuous spectrum of input values, subcategory of supervised learning."