24 terms
Plain-language explanations of terms used in our advisories. The first mention of a term in an article links here.
Advanced persistent threat: typically a state-backed group that stays hidden for a long time.
Trying leaked username/password pairs from other sites at scale, betting on password reuse.
Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures: one public identifier per vulnerability, so everyone refers to the same issue.
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (0–10). Measures technical severity, not the risk to your environment.
Data taken out of an organisation without authorisation.
Distributed denial of service: flooding a service until it is unavailable.
Endpoint detection and response: tooling that detects and helps contain suspicious activity on endpoints.
EOL: a product the vendor no longer updates, so new vulnerabilities stay unfixed.
Exploit Prediction Scoring System: the probability (0–100%) that a CVE is exploited in the next 30 days.
IOC: traces an attack leaves, such as malicious IPs, domains or file hashes, used to check whether you were hit.
CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. A listed CVE is being used in real attacks: patch it first.
An attacker spreading from the first foothold to other internal systems.
A listed Taiwanese company's mandatory cyber-incident announcement on MOPS: the company's own official statement.
A temporary measure that lowers risk until you can patch, such as disabling a feature or restricting access.
MFA: a login needs a second proof besides the password, such as a phone or hardware key.
An update a vendor releases to fix a vulnerability.
Impersonating a trusted party to steal credentials or money, or to get malware run.
Malware that encrypts or steals data and demands payment to restore or not publish it.
RCE: an attacker runs arbitrary code on a system over the network. Usually the most dangerous class of bug.
Security operations centre: the team that monitors alerts and investigates incidents.
Compromising software, a service or a contractor you rely on, and reaching you through it.
A contractor's or service provider's security problem reaching you.
Virtual private network: remote access into the corporate network, and a common way in for attackers.
A vulnerability exploited before the vendor has a fix.