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Software Engineering vocabulary · APIs, Networking and Security

Escalate

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/ˈeskəleɪt/verbCore term

In software engineering, escalate means: To pass an alert, incident or problem to a more senior person or team because it is serious or beyond your own authority or skills.

In Turkish: eskale etmek, üst seviyeye iletmek, üst kademeye taşımak

How it is used

A daily word in SOC work: Tier 1 escalates to Tier 2, and major incidents are escalated to management or the CISO. The noun is escalation, as in 'escalation path' or 'escalation matrix'. Do not confuse it with privilege escalation, which is an attack technique.

Example sentences

  1. If the host is a domain controller, escalate the alert to Tier 2 immediately.

  2. The incident was escalated to the CISO because customer data was involved.

Common collocations

  • escalate an alert
  • escalate to management
  • escalation path
  • escalation matrix
  • alertAn automatic notification sent to engineers when a monitored value crosses a limit or something looks wrong, for example when the error rate is too high.
  • incidentAn unplanned event that disrupts a service or makes it worse for users, such as an outage, a big slowdown or a data problem, and that needs a quick response.
  • 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.
  • privilege escalationGaining higher access rights than one was given, for example moving from a normal user account to administrator, usually by abusing a flaw or misconfiguration.

This word in other fields

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

More terms: APIs, Networking and Security

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