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Cybersecurity vocabulary · Vulnerabilities and Patching

Mitigate

Meaning in cybersecurity, with examples

/ˈmɪtɪɡeɪt/verbCore term

In cybersecurity, mitigate means: To reduce the likelihood or impact of a risk or attack when it cannot be removed completely, for example with a workaround or an extra control.

In Turkish: azaltmak, hafifletmek, etkisini düşürmek

How it is used

Used constantly in advisories and risk registers: a vendor 'provides mitigations' until a patch is ready, and a team 'mitigates the risk'. The noun is mitigation; 'DDoS mitigation' means filtering out attack traffic.

Example sentences

  1. Until the patch is out, we can mitigate the issue by disabling the vulnerable feature.

  2. MFA mitigates the risk of stolen passwords but does not remove it.

Common collocations

  • mitigate a risk
  • mitigating control
  • risk mitigation
  • temporary mitigation
  • remediationThe work of fixing a security problem at its source, such as applying a patch, changing a configuration or rewriting vulnerable code.
  • riskThe chance that a threat will use a weakness and cause harm, combined with how serious that harm would be for the organisation.
  • security controlAny safeguard, whether technical, administrative or physical, that reduces a security risk, such as a firewall, a policy, a training course or a locked door.
  • patchA small update released by a vendor to fix a bug or close a security vulnerability in software, firmware or an operating system.

This word in other fields

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

More terms: Vulnerabilities and Patching

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