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Cybersecurity vocabulary · Incident Response

Incident

Meaning in cybersecurity, with examples

/ˈɪnsɪdənt/nounCore term

In cybersecurity, incident means: An event that threatens or harms the confidentiality, integrity or availability of systems or data, such as a malware infection or an unauthorised login.

In Turkish: güvenlik olayı, siber olay, olay

How it is used

Short for 'security incident'. Incidents are reported, triaged, investigated, contained and closed. Teams rate them by severity (P1, P2 and so on) and write an incident report afterwards. Not every alert is an incident; an analyst decides that.

Example sentences

  1. Please report any suspected incident to the security team immediately.

  2. The incident was closed after we confirmed that no data had left the network.

Common collocations

  • security incident
  • report an incident
  • incident response
  • incident report
  • major incident
  • data breachA security incident in which personal or confidential data is accessed, stolen, disclosed or lost without authorisation.
  • containmentThe stage of incident response in which the team stops an attack from spreading or causing more damage, for example by isolating infected machines.
  • escalateTo pass an alert, incident or problem to a more senior person or team because it is serious or beyond your own authority or skills.
  • playbookA written, step-by-step guide that tells a security team how to handle a specific type of alert or incident, such as phishing or ransomware.
  • alertA notification from a security tool saying that something suspicious or important has happened and may need a person to look at it.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Incident Response

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