Cybersecurity Glossary
Search the course menu or use your browser’s find function to locate a term.
Search the course menu or use your browser’s find function to locate a term.
Asset
Anything valuable that needs protection, such as data, accounts, devices or services.
Authentication
Verifying who a user or system claims to be.
Authorization
Deciding what an authenticated identity is allowed to access or change.
Confidentiality
Keeping information accessible only to authorized people and systems.
Exploit
Code or a technique that uses a vulnerability to cause unintended behavior.
Hash
A fixed-length result produced from data; commonly used for integrity checks and password storage designs.
Integrity
Protecting data from unauthorized or accidental modification.
Least privilege
Giving an account only the permissions necessary for its task.
Payload
The part of an operation that performs the intended action after delivery or execution.
Phishing
Social engineering that attempts to trick someone into revealing information or taking an unsafe action.
Threat
A potential cause of harm to a system or asset.
Vulnerability
A weakness that could be used to compromise confidentiality, integrity or availability.