Identity and access management (IAM) is the discipline of verifying who users are and controlling what they can do across the systems an organization runs. The category covers authentication (proving you’re who you say you are), authorization...
A data breach response plan is the documented set of procedures, decision authority, communication templates, and operational steps an organization activates when a data breach is detected. The plan exists because data breaches happen on a timeline...
IT asset management (ITAM) is the discipline of knowing what hardware, software, and licenses your organization owns, where they are, who has them, and how to manage them through their full lifecycle from purchase to disposal. The category is...
The CIA triad is the foundational framework of cybersecurity. The three letters stand for Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability, and they describe the three properties every security program is trying to maintain. Almost any security control...
Disaster recovery planning is the discipline of preparing in advance to restore business operations after a major incident that takes systems offline. The incidents vary widely (ransomware, datacenter outage, hardware failure, natural disaster...
Public vs private cloud is one of the foundational distinctions in cloud computing, and it’s a question that comes up early in any serious cloud strategy discussion. The two deployment models share the same underlying technology pattern (on...
Endpoint security is the discipline of protecting the devices employees actually use to do their work: laptops, desktops, smartphones, tablets, and sometimes specialty devices like point-of-sale terminals or kiosks. The endpoints are where humans...
Hybrid work IT is the operational discipline of supporting employees who split their time between remote work and in-office work. The category emerged as widespread office return after pandemic-era full-remote settled into a long-term pattern of...
HTTPS and SSL/TLS are the protocols that make encrypted web connections possible. When you visit a website and see the padlock icon in your browser’s address bar, the underlying technology is TLS (Transport Layer Security, the successor to the...
What is a VPN? A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a technology that creates an encrypted tunnel between a device and a network over an untrusted intermediate network like the public internet. The tunnel makes the device’s traffic look (from...
