Terminology Index

Glossary

2953 terms

Posture Remediation

Fixing the misconfigurations and policy violations that posture-management tools surface, closing exposures the CSPM identified across the cloud estate, so cloud security posture actually improves.

Posture Reporting

Communicating the state of cloud security posture to stakeholders, findings, trends, remediation pace, coverage, so leadership and teams can see where the cloud stands and steer improvement.

Posture Standards

The defined baseline a cloud environment is measured against, often drawn from frameworks like CIS Benchmarks, that posture management uses to identify deviations and drive remediation.

PowerShell Detection

Detecting malicious PowerShell use through behavioral signals like encoded commands, suspicious script content, unusual parent processes, and known abuse patterns, often mapped to ATT&CK to catch a heavily abused execution technique.

PowerShell Hunting

PowerShell hunting correlates available process, command-line, script, module, transcription, security-interface, endpoint, network, file, and identity evidence for suspicious use.

PowerShell Logging

Windows and PowerShell telemetry for engine, module, script-block, transcription, and related activity, requiring deliberate policy, collection, protection, and privacy handling.

PowerShell Telemetry Detection

PowerShell telemetry detection combines process, script block, module, security-product, network, identity, and host evidence to identify concerning PowerShell behavior.

Pre-Audit Activities

The work done before a cloud-compliance audit, gap closure, evidence gathering, stakeholder readiness, and dry runs, so the audit goes smoothly and findings reflect real, sustained compliance rather than scrambled preparation.

Preflight Request

A CORS mechanism where the browser sends an OPTIONS request before certain cross-origin requests, asking the server which origins, methods, and headers are allowed, used to safely permit some cross-origin web behavior.

Preparation

The first phase of the incident response lifecycle, building the readiness (plans, tools, training, contacts) needed before incidents happen, so when an incident occurs, the team can respond effectively rather than improvise.

Prescriptive vs Outcome-Based

The distinction between frameworks that prescribe specific controls and those that require outcomes (leaving implementation up to the organization), shaping how flexibly the framework can be applied across different environments.

Pretexting

A social-engineering technique where an attacker invents a credible scenario or impersonation to get the target to share information or take an action, exploiting trust and helpfulness rather than technology.

Preventive Control

A control designed to stop unwanted activity before it happens.

Preventive Controls

Controls that aim to stop incidents before they happen, locks, firewalls, access controls, training, one of the core control categories alongside detective and corrective controls.

Principle of Least Functionality

A hardening principle that systems should run only the services, features, and software they actually need, since every unneeded component is added attack surface that could be exploited.

Principle of Least Privilege

A foundational security principle: every user, process, and system should have only the minimum permissions needed to do its job, so the damage from any compromise is bounded.

Prior Consultation

Prior consultation is the GDPR Article 36 process used before processing when a DPIA shows high residual risk that the controller cannot effectively mitigate.

Priority Intelligence Requirements

The top intelligence questions a leader or organization needs answered to make decisions, used to focus a threat-intelligence program on what matters most rather than collecting everything indiscriminately.

Privacy

The expectation and right of individuals over how their personal data is collected, used, and shared. Privacy is distinct from security, though they overlap, and is governed by laws like GDPR and program-level practice.

Privacy Breach Assessment

Assessing a confirmed privacy incident to determine its scope, severity, and regulatory implications, what personal data is affected, how many people, what harms, and what notifications are required.

Privacy Breach Identification

Recognizing that an event qualifies as a privacy breach under applicable law, distinct from a generic security incident, since not every security event is a notifiable privacy breach and vice versa.

Privacy Impact Assessment

A structured evaluation of how a new system, service, or activity will affect personal data and privacy, identifying risks and required safeguards before it goes live. A core privacy-by-design and governance practice.

Privacy Impact Handoff

A privacy impact handoff gives authorized specialists accurate facts about processing purpose, people, data, flows, recipients, locations, retention, automation, safeguards, changes, and risks.

Privacy Law Change Management

Privacy law change management detects and evaluates legal, regulatory, judicial, guidance, and adequacy changes and turns them into owned implementation work.

Privacy vs Security Law

The distinction between privacy law (governing how personal data is handled) and security law (governing how systems and data must be protected). They overlap but differ in focus, obligations, and enforcement.

Private Address Space

Reserved IP address ranges (like 10.0.0.0/8, 192.168.0.0/16) used inside organizations' networks, not routable on the public internet. Understanding them is foundational to interpreting internal versus external traffic.

Private Cloud

Cloud infrastructure dedicated to a single organization, run on-premises or by a provider for that customer only. It offers more control and isolation than public cloud at the cost of less scalability and shared efficiency.

Private Key

The secret half of an asymmetric key pair, kept strictly confidential by its owner, used to decrypt or sign. Its secrecy is the foundation of identity and trust in public-key cryptography.

PrivateLink

A cloud service that connects customer networks to provider services or to other customers' services through private endpoints, avoiding public-internet exposure of those connections and reducing attack surface.

PrivateLink (or equivalent services across clouds) lets a customer reach a cloud service or another customer's service via a private endpoint inside their own VPC, so the traffic never traverses the public internet. This reduces exposure, enables strict network policy, and simplifies compliance for sensitive workloads. For a cloud engineer, PrivateLink is a key building block for private connectivity patterns, hub-and-spoke designs, and SaaS exposure that doesn't require public IPs.

Introduced in: Cloud Security Engineer Fundamentals

Examples

Reaching a managed database service via a private endpoint instead of the internet.
Exposing a SaaS service to customers via PrivateLink without public IPs.
Using PrivateLink to keep sensitive traffic off the public internet.

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Privilege Accumulation

Privilege accumulation is the retention of access from old roles, projects, temporary assignments, contracts, or incident duties after the need ends.

Privilege Creep

The gradual accumulation of unneeded permissions as people change roles, get temporary access that never gets revoked, or accept new responsibilities, eroding least privilege over time.

Privilege Escalation

Gaining more access than originally allowed.