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Cybersecurity vocabulary · Threats and Attacks

Threat

Meaning in cybersecurity, with examples

/θret/nounCore term

In cybersecurity, threat means: Anything that could cause harm to a system or to data, such as an attacker, a piece of malware, a careless employee or even a flood in the server room.

In Turkish: tehdit

How it is used

Used constantly in risk discussions, threat reports and briefings. Security people talk about threats to an organisation, emerging threats and the threat landscape. A threat is the possible source of harm; a vulnerability is the weakness it could use.

Example sentences

  1. Insider threats are harder to detect because the person already has legitimate access.

  2. The quarterly report summarises the main threats to our payment systems.

Common collocations

  • insider threat
  • emerging threat
  • threat landscape
  • threat model
  • pose a threat
  • vulnerabilityA weakness in software, hardware, a configuration or a process that an attacker could use to cause harm or to gain access they should not have.
  • riskThe chance that a threat will use a weakness and cause harm, combined with how serious that harm would be for the organisation.
  • threat actorA person or group responsible for a cyberattack or threat, such as a criminal gang, a state-backed group, a hacktivist or a malicious insider.
  • threat intelligenceCollected and analysed information about attackers, their methods and their tools that helps an organisation prepare for and detect attacks.

This word in other fields

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

More terms: Threats and Attacks

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