Glossary

Password Reset

The flow that lets users regain access by setting a new password, a security-critical web feature, since weak reset flows are a common way attackers take over accounts by bypassing authentication.

Password Spraying

An attack that tries a few common passwords across many accounts to avoid lockouts.

Passwordless Authentication

Authentication that does not rely on a password at all, using factors like passkeys, biometrics, or hardware keys, removing the weakest link (passwords) and the attacks that target them.

Patch

A software update that fixes bugs, vulnerabilities, or stability problems.

Patch Management

The process of identifying, testing, deploying, and tracking fixes for software weaknesses.

Patch Testing

Verifying that patches work and don't break systems before deploying them broadly, balancing the security need to patch quickly against the operational risk that a patch could cause outages or incompatibilities.

Patch Window

An approved period for deploying and validating updates, coordinated with service risk, exploit urgency, dependencies, rollback, availability, and change controls.

Patch Windows

Scheduled periods during which patches are deployed, planned to balance prompt patching with minimizing disruption to operations, so updates roll out predictably rather than ad hoc.

Patch and Configuration Remediation

Patch and configuration remediation removes or corrects a vulnerable condition through a supported update, upgrade, configuration change, feature removal, component replacement, rebuild, or retirement.

Patches

Updates that fix software flaws, including security vulnerabilities. Applying patches promptly is one of the most fundamental and effective security measures, since unpatched flaws are a leading attack vector.

Path

The part of a URL that identifies a specific resource on a server, the portion after the host. Defenders read it to understand what is being requested and to recognize attacks like path traversal or forced browsing.

Pattern Library

A maintained collection of reusable detection structures, assumptions, test cases, data requirements, and tuning guidance for recurring behaviors.

Peer Group Baselines

Peer group baselines compare an entity with systems or identities that share a meaningful role, environment, schedule, geography, or business function.

Peer Group Quality

Peer group quality measures whether identities compared by an analytic genuinely share relevant work, scope, seniority, systems, projects, or duties.

Penetration Test Severity Analysis

Penetration test severity analysis evaluates exploit conditions and technical effects together with affected assets, users, business processes, safety, fraud, privacy, recovery, detection, obligations, and compensating controls.

Penetration Testing Authorization

The formal permission and scope agreement that must be in place before any penetration test, defining what may be tested, when, and how, so testing is legal, bounded, and authorized rather than an actual attack.

Pentest Executive Communication

Pentest executive communication explains assessment scope, confidence, limitations, demonstrated business outcomes, concentrated risks, priority actions, owners, and residual risk in decision-oriented language.

Pentest Reporting Excellence

Producing penetration-test reports that are clear, accurate, prioritized, and actionable, communicating findings, risk, and remediation so the client can actually fix issues, the deliverable that gives a test its value.

Per-Session Access

Per-session access limits authorization to a defined subject-resource interaction with explicit scope, lifetime, credentials, monitoring, reevaluation, and teardown.

Percentile-Based Detection

Percentile-based detection flags observations above or below a selected rank in a reference distribution instead of assuming that the data follows a normal distribution.

Perimeter Model Failure

The recognition that the traditional 'trust the inside, defend the perimeter' security model no longer works, since cloud, mobile, and remote work erase a clear boundary and once inside, attackers move freely. It is the motivation for zero trust.

Permission

An authorization to perform a specified action on a resource under defined conditions, whose effective result may depend on multiple policies and explicit denies.

Permission Boundaries

A cloud IAM feature that sets the maximum permissions an identity can have, capping effective access even if broader permissions are granted, used to safely delegate administration without risking over-permissioning.

Permissions

The specific rights granted to an identity to perform actions on resources, read a file, modify a record, call an API. Managing permissions to the minimum needed is the essence of access control.

Permissive Security Groups

A cloud misconfiguration where security groups (instance-level firewalls) allow overly broad access, such as opening ports to the entire internet, creating exposure that attackers readily find and exploit.

Persistence

Techniques used to keep access after restarts, password changes, or defensive actions.

Persistence Audit

Systematically examining a system for persistence mechanisms, the ways attackers maintain access across reboots, to find unauthorized or suspicious ones during hardening or investigation on a host.

Persistence Change Detection

Persistence change detection observes creation or modification of scheduled jobs, services, startup mechanisms, credentials, automation hooks, and other durable execution paths.

Persistence Hunts

Threat hunts that proactively search for attacker persistence mechanisms across the environment, looking for the autostart entries, tasks, and other footholds adversaries use to survive reboots and maintain access.

Persistence Indicators

Persistence indicators are identity or configuration changes that could let an actor retain access after credentials, sessions, or systems are remediated.

Persistence Mechanism

A change or dependency that lets unauthorized access, code, or control survive reboot, logout, credential change, process exit, or another interruption.

Persistence Mechanisms

The techniques attackers use to keep access to a system across reboots and logoffs, such as scheduled tasks, services, registry run keys, and startup entries. Defenders must know them to detect, hunt, and remove persistence.