Glossary
Cybersecurity Analyst Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential cybersecurity analyst terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key cybersecurity analyst vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in cybersecurity analyst training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- CVE
- Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures: public IDs for known vulnerabilities.
- CVSS
- A scoring system rating vulnerability severity.
- EDR
- Endpoint detection and response: monitors devices for threats.
- False positive
- An alert that turns out to be harmless.
- Incident response
- The process of preparing for, detecting, containing and recovering from incidents.
- IOC
- Indicator of compromise: evidence of a possible attack.
- Least privilege
- Giving users only the access they need.
- Patch management
- Applying updates to fix vulnerabilities.
- Phishing
- Deceptive messages designed to steal data or install malware.
- Ransomware
- Malware that encrypts data and demands payment.
- SIEM
- Security information and event management: collects and analyzes logs.
- SOC
- Security operations center: the team that monitors and responds to threats.
- Threat intelligence
- Information about attackers and their methods.
- Vulnerability
- A weakness that could be exploited.
- Zero trust
- A model that verifies every user and device rather than trusting the network.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Cybersecurity Analyst practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Cybersecurity Analyst training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.