Glossary

C2 Communication Detection

Detections that identify command-and-control traffic, the channel a compromised host uses to receive attacker instructions, by spotting patterns like regular beaconing, suspicious destinations, or anomalous protocols.

C2 Hunts

Threat hunts specifically aimed at finding command-and-control activity that detections missed, by searching telemetry for beaconing patterns, rare external connections, and other signs of an attacker's hidden communication channel.

CI/CD Credential Management

Securing the secrets, API keys, tokens, and credentials, used by continuous integration and deployment pipelines. Because pipelines are powerful and automated, their credentials are a prime target and must be vaulted, scoped, and rotated.

CI/CD Security Integration

Building security checks directly into continuous integration and deployment pipelines, so issues like vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and exposed secrets are caught automatically before code reaches production.

CIA Triad

The CIA triad is a model for thinking about confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

CIAM Build vs Buy

The decision of whether to build a custom customer identity system or adopt a commercial CIAM platform. It weighs control and customization against the cost, time, and security burden of building and maintaining identity in-house.

CIAM Consent Management

Capturing, recording, and honoring customers' choices about how their personal data is collected and used, in a customer identity system. It is essential for privacy compliance and for maintaining customer trust.

CIAM Data Subject Rights

The mechanisms a customer identity system provides to fulfill individuals' privacy rights, such as accessing, correcting, deleting, or exporting their personal data, as required by privacy regulations.

CIAM Distinct from IAM

The recognition that customer identity (CIAM) differs fundamentally from workforce identity (IAM): it serves millions of external, untrusted users who self-register, demands privacy and consent handling, and prioritizes a low-friction experience over administrative control.

CIAM Evaluation Criteria

The factors used to compare and select a customer identity platform, such as scalability, authentication options, fraud and bot defense, privacy and consent features, developer experience, and total cost. They turn a vague 'which CIAM?' into a structured decision.

CIAM Fraud Integration

Connecting a customer identity platform with fraud-detection signals and systems so that risk, device intelligence, behavior, and reputation, can shape authentication and account decisions in real time, blocking abuse without burdening legitimate customers.

CIAM Platform Landscape

The range of available customer identity platforms and their differing strengths, from full-featured commercial suites to developer-focused services and open-source options. Understanding the landscape is the starting point for choosing or benchmarking a CIAM solution.

CIAM Threat Landscape

The specific threats facing customer identity systems, including credential stuffing, account takeover, fake-account creation, bot-driven abuse, and fraud. Because CIAM is internet-facing and serves untrusted users, it absorbs attacks that workforce IAM rarely sees.

CIAM Use Cases

The customer-facing scenarios a CIAM platform must support, such as self-service registration and login, social and passwordless sign-in, profile and consent management, and progressive profiling. They define what the system actually has to do.

CIDR Notation

A compact way to write an IP address range and its network size, such as 192.168.1.0/24, where the number after the slash says how many leading bits define the network. It replaced rigid address classes with flexible subnetting.

CIS Benchmarks

Detailed, consensus-developed configuration guides from the Center for Internet Security that specify how to securely configure operating systems, applications, and devices. They turn 'harden this system' into concrete, checkable settings.

CIS Benchmarks Cloud

CIS configuration benchmarks tailored to cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and GCP, specifying secure settings for cloud accounts and services. They give cloud teams a concrete, checkable baseline for hardening their environments.

CIS Control Categories

The way the CIS Controls group their safeguards into logical areas, such as asset and software inventory, data protection, access control, and incident response. The categories organize the controls into a coherent program rather than a flat list.

CIS Controls

A prioritized set of security practices used to reduce common cyber risk.

CIS Controls Prioritization Logic

The reasoning behind the order of the CIS Controls, which front-loads the safeguards that block the most common and damaging attacks, so organizations get the biggest risk reduction first rather than trying to do everything at once.

CIS Controls Structure

The overall architecture of the CIS Controls: a prioritized set of controls, each broken into specific safeguards, organized into categories and tiered by Implementation Groups. The structure is what makes the framework both comprehensive and actionable.

CIS for Smaller Organizations

Applying the CIS Controls in a way that fits a small organization's limited resources, by focusing on the foundational Implementation Group that delivers the most essential protection without requiring a large security team.

CIS vs Other Frameworks

How the CIS Controls compare with frameworks like the NIST CSF or ISO 27001: CIS is a prioritized, prescriptive set of concrete safeguards, while others are broader and more flexible or certifiable. The comparison helps teams pick the right tool for their need.

CMD Detection

Detecting suspicious use of the Windows command shell (cmd.exe), such as commands spawned by unexpected parents or running reconnaissance and download activity, since attackers heavily abuse built-in command-line tools.

CNAME Record

A DNS record that makes one domain name an alias for another, so a lookup of the alias is redirected to the canonical name's records. It is commonly used to point a name at a service whose address may change.

CNAPP

A Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform: an integrated product that combines posture management, workload protection, identity analysis, and other cloud security functions into one platform for unified visibility and protection across the cloud lifecycle.

CNAPP Integration

Combining cloud workload protection with the broader CNAPP platform so that workload findings (vulnerabilities, runtime threats) are correlated with posture and identity context, producing prioritized, attack-path-aware risk rather than isolated alerts.

CORS

Cross-Origin Resource Sharing: a browser mechanism that lets a server specify which other origins may access its resources via scripts, relaxing the default same-origin policy in a controlled way. Misconfigured CORS can expose data to malicious sites.

CSA STAR

The Cloud Security Alliance's Security, Trust, Assurance and Risk registry, a public program where cloud providers publish assessments of their security controls, letting customers evaluate and compare providers' security and compliance.

CSF Profiles

In the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, a Profile is a snapshot of an organization's chosen cybersecurity outcomes, used to describe its current state, define a target state, and plan the gap between them.

CSF Tiers

The NIST Cybersecurity Framework's Implementation Tiers, from Partial (Tier 1) to Adaptive (Tier 4), that describe how rigorous and integrated an organization's cybersecurity risk management practices are.

CSF vs 800-53 Use Cases

Guidance on when to use the NIST Cybersecurity Framework versus NIST SP 800-53: the CSF as a flexible, outcome-based structure for risk management and communication, and 800-53 as a detailed control catalog for implementation and federal compliance.