Cybersecurity Glossary

A security breach that enables an attacker to gain access or control over a system for an extended period of time usually without the owner of the system being aware of the violation. Often an APT takes advantage of numerous unknown vulnerabilities or zero day attacks, which allow the attacker to maintain access to the target even as some attack vectors are blocked.

Access control is the mechanism for managing user access to resources. There are three types of access control: DAC, MAC, and RBAC. DAC uses on-object ACLs to grant or deny specific privileges to users, MAC restricts access based on subject-object classification or clearance level labels, and RBAC controls access through job labels assigned with necessary permissions.

A security program designed to monitor a system for malicious software. Once malware is detected, the AV program will attempt to remove the offending item from the system or may simply quarantine the file for further analysis by an administrator. It is important to keep AV software detection databases current in order to have the best chance of detecting known forms of malware.

An anti-virus program detects and removes malicious code from a computer system or network communications. It uses pattern recognition, anomaly detection, behavioral detection, and heuristic detection to detect known and unknown malware.

Anything that is used in and is necessary to the completion of a business task. Assets include both tangible and intangible items such as equipment, software code, data, facilities, personnel, market value and public opinion.