Cybersecurity and AI security glossary

Short, plain definitions of the terms our vendors and customers use. Each term has its own page so search engines and AI assistants can cite it directly.

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Terms

ASPM: Application security posture management brings findings from code, build, cloud and runtime scanners into one view, removes duplicates, ranks them by real risk and tracks fixes to closure.
Shadow AI: Shadow AI is any AI tool, model or agent used inside an organisation without security or IT approval, such as an employee pasting company data into a public chatbot.
Prompt injection: Prompt injection is an attack in which crafted input makes an AI model ignore its instructions, reveal data or take unintended actions. It is a leading risk for AI applications and agents.
MCP (Model Context Protocol): Model Context Protocol is an open standard that lets AI agents connect to tools and data sources. Each MCP server an agent can reach extends what the agent can do, so access needs to be governed.
A2A (Agent2Agent): Agent2Agent is a protocol that lets AI agents from different platforms communicate and delegate tasks to each other. Security teams need to authenticate and authorise this traffic.
Indicator of Future Attack (IOFA): An Indicator of Future Attack is a signal that internet infrastructure matches the pattern attackers use to prepare an attack, before any attack has used it. Silent Push uses IOFA for preemptive defence.
Software supply chain security: Software supply chain security verifies that software you build or buy has not been tampered with and does not hide malware, secrets or exploitable flaws, including in open-source and third-party components.
Microsegmentation: Microsegmentation divides a network or cloud into small zones with their own rules, down to individual workloads, so a compromised system cannot freely reach others.
Lateral movement: Lateral movement is how an attacker moves from the first system they compromise to others in the environment, looking for credentials, data or systems to control.
Security data fabric: A security data fabric collects, cleans, enriches and routes security and observability data to the tools that need it, reducing cost and improving detection quality.
AI SOC: An AI SOC uses AI agents to perform security operations work such as alert triage, investigation and threat hunting, with analysts reviewing and deciding on important cases.
Value-added distributor: A value-added distributor sells technology through channel partners and adds services such as technical enablement, presales, training and local support, beyond simply supplying product.