Cybersecurity Glossary

Security assertion markup language (SAML) is an xml-based security specification developed by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) for exchanging authentication (and authorization) information between trusted entities over the internet. A framework for exchanging authentication and authorization information. Security typically involves checking the credentials presented by a party for authentication and authorization. Saml standardizes the representation of these credentials in an xml format called “assertions,” enhancing the interoperability between disparate applications. A protocol consisting of xml-based request and response message formats for exchanging security information, expressed in the form of assertions about subjects, between online business partners.

A session is a virtual connection between two hosts by which network traffic is passed. It is a way to store information (in variables) to be used across multiple pages.

Session hijacking is also known as cookie hijacking. It is an exploitation of a valid computer session, sometimes also called a session key, to gain unauthorized access to sensitive information or services in a computer system or network.

A smurf attack is a distributed denial-of-service attack in which large numbers of internet control message protocol (ICMP) packets with the intended victim’s spoofed source IP are broadcast to a computer network using an ip broadcast address. Most devices on a network respond to this by sending a reply to the source IP address. This can slow down the victim’s computer to the point where it becomes impossible to work on.

Security fault analysis (SFA) is an assessment, usually performed on information system hardware, to determine the security properties of a device when hardware fault is encountered.

Security strength is a measure of the computational complexity associated with recovering certain secret and/or security-critical information concerning a given cryptographic algorithm from known data (e.g. Plaintext/ciphertext pairs for a given encryption algorithm). It is also a number associated with the amount of work (that is, the number of operations) that is required to break a cryptographic algorithm or system. Sometimes referred to as a security level.

A security authorization boundary is an information security area that includes a grouping of tools, technologies, and data.

A security plan is a formal document that provides an overview of the security requirements for an information system or an information security program and describes the security controls in place or planned for meeting those requirements.

Shell is a unix term for the interactive user interface with an operating system. The shell is the layer of programming that recognises and executes the commands that a user enters. In some systems, the shell is called a command interpreter.

A security level is a hierarchical indicator of the degree of sensitivity to a certain threat. It implies, according to the security policy being enforced, a specific level of protection.