Glossary

False Positive (Outcome)

An alert that fires even though the defined target behavior or condition did not occur, distinguished from a true detection of benign or authorized behavior.

False Positive Analysis

Investigating why a detection fired on benign activity, in detection engineering, so the rule can be tuned to reduce noise without losing its ability to catch real threats. It turns false positives into targeted improvements.

False Positive Disposition

False positive disposition is an evidence-backed, scoped decision that the asserted vulnerable condition is not present for the identified asset and observation.

False Positive Management

In vulnerability management, the process of identifying scanner findings that are not actually exploitable or present, validating them, and suppressing them, so remediation effort focuses on real vulnerabilities rather than scanner noise.

False Positives

Alerts that flag benign activity as malicious, a detection firing when nothing bad actually happened. High false-positive rates waste analyst time, cause alert fatigue, and erode trust in detections, so reducing them is a constant goal.

FedRAMP

The US government program that standardizes security assessment and authorization for cloud services used by federal agencies, so a cloud provider authorized once can be trusted across government under a common baseline.

FedRAMP Authorization

The process and resulting status by which a cloud service achieves FedRAMP approval, completing a NIST 800-53-based control assessment and obtaining an authorization to operate so federal agencies can use it.

FedRAMP Cloud Architecture

Designing a cloud architecture to meet FedRAMP requirements, with the boundary definition, segmentation, logging, encryption, and identity controls needed for a federal authorization. It bakes FedRAMP's controls into the architecture itself.

FedRAMP Rev5 and 20x

Distinct FedRAMP authorization approaches: the NIST SP 800-53 Revision 5 baselines and the evolving FedRAMP 20x model, each governed by current official requirements and scope.

Federated Identity

An arrangement where one system trusts another to authenticate users, so a person can use a single identity across multiple applications or organizations without separate accounts, enabling single sign-on via standards like SAML and OIDC.

Federated Identity (Cloud)

Using federation in cloud environments so identities from a trusted provider (a corporate directory or another cloud) can access cloud resources without separate cloud accounts or long-lived credentials, as configured by a cloud engineer.

Federation Gap

A federation gap is an application, identity population, administrative route, or fallback login outside the intended centralized identity and assurance policy.

Federation Service

A federation service lets one security domain rely on identity information issued by another domain through a configured trust relationship.

Field Normalization

Field normalization maps equivalent source fields into a consistent schema while preserving their original meaning and provenance.

Field Semantics and Normalization

Field semantics and normalization define the native meaning, data type, null behavior, entity direction, and conversion rule for fields used in detection logic.

File Permissions

Operating-system rules that govern operations such as reading, writing, executing, deleting, or changing files and directories for particular identities and groups.

File Processing Security Testing

File processing security testing evaluates selection, upload, parsing, transformation, storage, retrieval, preview, sharing, retention, and deletion using harmless labeled test files.

File Type Verification

File type verification compares a name and extension with magic bytes, headers, structure, and parser results to identify what an artifact actually contains.

Filesystem and Registry Behavior

Filesystem and Registry behavior records attempted and successful reads, writes, creates, deletes, renames, and value changes with process, result, path, value, and time context.

Finding Aggregation

Combining related individual audit findings into consolidated, higher-level issues, so reporting highlights systemic problems and their overall significance rather than burying stakeholders in a long list of isolated observations.

Finding Analysis Workflow

A controlled sequence for validating evidence, affected scope, root condition, exploit path, consequence, compensating controls, severity, ownership, and remediation.

Finding Dispute Resolution

Finding dispute resolution compares assessment evidence and assumptions with stakeholder counterevidence and safely reproduces the disputed behavior when needed.

Finding Documentation

Recording each assessment finding clearly and completely, what the issue is, the evidence for it, its risk, and how to remediate, so the finding is understandable, credible, and actionable to the people who must fix it.

Finding Lifecycle

The stages an audit finding moves through, from identification and verification, through severity rating and reporting, to remediation tracking and closure, so issues are managed to resolution rather than just noted once.

Finding Reproducibility

Finding reproducibility records the asset, identity, preconditions, synthetic object, operation, minimal input, observed and expected behavior, evidence, time, limitations, and cleanup needed to repeat a result safely.

Finding Severity

The rating that conveys how serious an audit finding is, based on its risk and potential impact, so stakeholders can prioritize which issues to address first and allocate remediation effort accordingly.

Finding Severity Rating

Finding severity rating applies a consistent risk method to a demonstrated scenario using likelihood, impact, existing controls, scope, and uncertainty.

Finding Verification

Confirming that an audit finding is real and accurate before reporting it, by checking the evidence and reasoning, so the audit does not raise false or unsupported issues that would undermine its credibility.

Findings Management

The GRC analyst's work of tracking issues, audit findings, risk-assessment results, and control gaps, from identification through remediation to closure, so nothing falls through the cracks and progress is visible.

Firewall

A control that permits or blocks traffic based on rules and context.

Firewall Rule

A configured statement that tells a firewall whether to allow or block specific network traffic, based on attributes like source and destination address, port, and protocol. Rules are how a firewall's policy is actually expressed.

First Line and Second Line

Two of the 'three lines' model: the first line owns and operates risks and controls (the business and operations), while the second line (risk and compliance functions) sets policy and oversees, advises, and challenges the first line.