We’re living in unprecedented times, which means that cybersecurity terms are being introduced and explained in a new way every day. Keep up with the times by knowing these cyber security terms of 2025!
Understanding The Basic Cyber Security Terminology
Cyber security is the umbrella term for the protection of digital assets from cyber-attacks. It also includes measures to protect personal information and reduce the risk of data breaches, as well as preventative measures, are taken to prevent vulnerabilities in computer systems.
When it comes to understanding cyber security terms, some basic terms are important to know. These include:
➜ Threat – A threat could be anything from a virus to a hacker. It can be something that causes harm or pain or just something that causes you to worry.
➜ Vulnerability – A weakness in an information system or system design that makes it vulnerable to compromise by an attacker.
➜ Penetration testing – A type of testing in which security professionals try to break into a system.
➜ Forensics – The process of collecting information about what happened during a penetration test so that you can determine if any damage was done and whether there was any unauthorized access.
➜ Penetration Tester – Someone who performs vulnerability assessments or penetration tests for clients or employers.
Cyber Security Terms You Need To Know In 2025
To help you stay on top of what’s happening in the cybersecurity space, we’ve compiled a list of some of the most important cyber security terms and concepts you should know about.
1. Spear Phishing
Spear phishing is a type of cyber attack that targets users who have access to corporate networks. It’s an attempt to trick employees into giving up personal information, like usernames and passwords. The attackers send emails that look like they come from legitimate sources, such as the company.
2. Identity & Access Management (IAM)
IAM is the process of managing identities in a company’s digital environment. It includes identity management, authentication, authorization, and provisioning. IAM is crucial for any organization that wants to maintain control over its data by ensuring that only authorized individuals have access to it.
3. Advanced Persistent Threat
An APT is an organized cyber threat that uses advanced techniques to gain access to a system or network. And this makes it one of the most important cyber security terms you need to know in 2025.
Advanced persistent threats (APTs) often use zero-day exploits to infiltrate and exfiltrate information from targeted systems and networks which means there is no public patch for the vulnerability they exploit.
An APT can take many forms such as keystroke loggers, watering hole attacks, ransomware, and credential theft. This makes this type of threat more difficult to detect and prevent than other types because it often involves multiple layers of encryption and advanced techniques that are difficult to identify with traditional malware detection tools.
APTs are often used in nation-state attacks and by criminal organizations such as fraudsters and thieves. They are mostly aimed at gaining access to sensitive information, such as the design of a product or the secret formulas for a drug you’re developing.
4. Shadow IT
Shadow IT is the use of a company’s internal systems to perform tasks outside of their scope or purpose.
For example, a company might have a policy that prohibits employees from using their personal devices for work purposes.
However, if an employee has their own device, they may be able to access confidential information on that device by using it to connect with work-related applications or documents. We have covered this topic in detail, talking about how DMARC can help prevent shadow IT practices.
Shadow IT can be a risk to an organization’s information security posture because it decreases control over data access and also increases the potential for data leaks and security breaches.
Therefore, Shadow IT is one of the most important cyber security terms you need to be aware of in 2025.
5. Zero Trust Networks
Zero trust networks are a way to secure your network from cyber-attacks. They do not allow any client device to connect to the network until they have been verified as safe. This is done by using certificates and tokens, which are issued by a trusted authority. These certificates and tokens can be used as identity verification for any device that is connecting to your network for it to be allowed access to the network.
With a zero-trust network, only certain devices have access to certain parts of the network and are then granted access as needed—for example, if one device is used for printing out documents or sending emails, it may be allowed to print documents or send emails without being connected to other computers in any other way.
6. Privileged Access Management (PAM)
Privileged Access Management (PAM) is a type of security control that limits access to resources based on the privileges of the user. This could include limiting network access, limiting file system access, or restricting user login and access to management consoles.
PAM also includes the enforcement of policies related to the management of privileged accounts, including setting up encryption keys, password policies, and lockout policies for administrators, developers, and other privileged users.
7. Container Security
You’ve probably heard of application security—the practice of ensuring that software applications are secure from cyberattacks. But there’s another cyber security term that’s just as important: container security.
Container security is the practice of monitoring and protecting the contents of a container.
A container is like a virtual machine holding all of your application settings and configuration files. In other words, it’s the root file system for your application. You can think of it as the basic OS layer that all other processes depend on. But instead of using an operating system, it uses the Docker software to create a sandboxed environment. Understanding and effectively implementing robust container security is critical in protecting the digital infrastructure of any organization. As organizations increasingly adopt containerized environments, identifying and mitigating the unique threats they pose becomes essential. This not only involves ensuring the security of container images and registries but also involves runtime protection, secret management, and compliance checks to prevent any unauthorized access or compromise.
8. Browser Isolation
One of the most advanced cyber security terms that comes up when discussing cyber security is Browser Isolation.
Browser isolation is a cyber defense mechanism used by cyber security researchers to protect against cross-site scripting attacks as well as isolate the browser from other applications on the computer.
This means that the code from one website cannot be executed on another site, preventing malicious scripts from being executed. It works by keeping websites from interacting with each other, which prevents them from sharing any data.
This is different from the way browsers traditionally work, which allows for communication between sites. This means that if your browser can see any other site on the internet, it could potentially execute malicious code on that site. The idea behind browser isolation is to prevent this from happening by preventing two websites from communicating with each other at all times.
Browser Isolation also means that if you are using Firefox, Safari browser, Chrome, or any other popular web browser, and you are infected with malware or a virus, it will be isolated from programs like Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Word (which may have been downloaded on the computer). This way, if you want to open those files in another program, they will not be able to access the virus.
9. Penetration Testing
In recent years, penetration testing has become a hot topic in the cybersecurity industry. Penetration testing is the practice of testing networks and applications for vulnerabilities. The testing is performed by penetration testers, who adopt the following steps:
- Identify the weaknesses of a system or network (for example, by using a vulnerability scanner)
- Identify points of entry into the target system (for example, by using port scanners)
- Determine if security measures are in place that would prevent unauthorized access from occurring (for example, by using a firewall scanner).
Penetration testing can be performed on any type of system—from your personal laptop to the systems at your company’s headquarters—but it’s most commonly used on networks that handle sensitive information like credit card numbers or personally identifiable information (PII).
10. Email Spoofing
Email spoofing is a method of deception that uses email addresses to send out emails pretending to be from the actual sender. This can be used to trick people into clicking on malicious links, opening attachments, or visiting websites that may contain malware.
Email spoofing occurs when an attacker creates an email account with a similar name to the one they want to impersonate. They then send emails from this account with bogus information that makes it seem as though they are sending emails from their own address.
11. Email Authentication
Email authentication is the process of verifying that a message sent from a specific email address was actually sent by that specific person. Email authentication is an important cybersecurity term to learn because it allows businesses to be confident in the integrity of messages sent through email channels, secure their networks, and prevent fraudulent activities.
Keep Your Business’s Email Security Top Standard with PowerDMARC
The impact of cyber attacks is growing every day, most of which are perpetrated via email.
At PowerDMARC, we offer advanced protection against advanced email-based attacks like spoofing and phishing. Our DMARC analyzer prevents threats like these by helping you shift towards an enforced DMARC policy to block out bad emails sent from your own domain.
We can help your business stay ahead of the curve on cyber defense. Take a free DMARC trial today to weigh out the benefits yourself!
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