Glossary

Qualitative Analysis Depth

The level of rigor and structure brought to qualitative risk analysis, from quick scoring to deep documented reasoning about scenarios, which determines how trustworthy and useful qualitative results are for decisions.

Qualitative Risk

Risk analysis expressed in non-numeric, descriptive terms such as high/medium/low or red/amber/green, common in GRC for its accessibility, often paired with structured criteria for consistency.

Qualitative Risk Limitations

The constraints of qualitative risk methods, subjective ratings, poor comparability across raters, inability to combine or compare in dollar terms, that motivate using quantitative methods like FAIR for certain decisions.

Quantitative Risk

Risk analysis expressed in numbers, frequencies, probability distributions, and dollar amounts, that enables comparison, aggregation, and clear financial reasoning. FAIR is the leading quantitative approach in cybersecurity.

Quantitative Risk Communication

Presenting quantitative risk results, ranges, distributions, and confidence, to decision-makers in ways they can act on, avoiding the false precision and impenetrability that quantitative analyses can otherwise convey.

Quantitative Risk Skepticism

Healthy skepticism toward quantitative risk results, recognizing input uncertainty, model limits, and the risk of false precision, so numbers inform rather than mislead decisions.

Quantitative Risk Value

The reasons to use quantitative risk methods, comparability, aggregation, dollar-level decision-making, defensibility, that justify investing the extra effort beyond qualitative analysis.

Query Performance

How fast and efficiently SIEM queries return results. Good performance is essential to detection, hunting, and investigation, since slow queries throttle analyst workflow and degrade SOC effectiveness.

Query String

The part of a URL after the question mark that carries named parameters and values. Defenders read query strings to understand requests and to spot injection or tampering attempts in web traffic.

Query Tuning

The practice of refining SIEM queries to run faster, return more relevant results, and consume fewer resources, by reordering filters, narrowing time ranges, and reshaping logic.

Queue Management

The discipline of managing the SOC's alert queue, prioritizing, batching, and clearing items so the team handles the most important alerts in time without burning out or letting noise accumulate.