Unless you live under a rock, you can’t get away from the rapid expansion of cybersecurity threats, tools, and solutions. Attending a conference or event can be a great way to drink from the firehouse of the current landscape on any topic, but brace yourself – you may also find yourself swimming in a sea of the usual buzzwords that we all can’t help but propagate.
Love them or hate them, some terms and phrases have become so ubiquitous that they become buzz – tag lines that get tacked onto tools, solutions, or problems that aren’t quite aligned with their original or perhaps intended definition.
AI
Less a buzzword than the current technical reality, AI quite literally is everywhere. From your email inbox to your car, healthcare to agriculture, it’s becoming less a matter of where AI is than where it isn’t. But AI is still included on a list of buzzwords because when it comes to how the term is used, it’s often as much hyperbole as reality. You can’t just throw AI into any solution – and AI isn’t always the solution.
Hypersonic
I blame Space Force for the demand for all things hypersonic, but you truly can’t go to a cyber or intel conference today without encountering space content and at least someone who tries to take your program hypersonic – and may or may not mean five times the speed of sound when they say it. Russia is currently developing at least three hypersonic weapons, according to news reports, and a Russian Kinzhai missile was allegedly used against Ukrainian armed forces in the war in Ukraine.
Russia’s hypersonic missile brag sent echoes of the Cold War missile gap, but is there really a hypersonic missile race today? It really depends on who you ask and what buzz you believe.
Cyber Kill Chain
Not just a classic Nicolas Cage movie, Kill Chain has had a moment, but if you use this phrase you’d better know what you’re talking about. The kill chain is a military concept around the structure of an attack. In the cyber arena, it’s become a term used to address cyber attacks, and one of the major defense contractors has even developed its own tool around it. Kill Chain security, kill chain cyber, kill chain – you name it, someone has come up with a way to put kill chain around it.
Information Domain
You know information, you know domain, but do you know what your information domain is? This is another classic example of military terms finding a home in the cyber threat landscape. Domain names are obviously used throughout the internet. But information domain is another term where individuals who know what both of the words independently mean combine them together to make things more exciting.
‘Baked-in’ Security
I like my security nice and gooey, with a warm, half-baked center, myself. But go to most security conferences today and you’ll hear that we need to keep the security baked-in. And my guess is they mean fully baked, but I’m not entirely sure. I thought the intel community still had a marijuana ban. The reality if this statement is on track – security, like most critical business functions, can’t be an add-on. It needs to be a cornerstone concept. But maybe save the baking vernacular for the kitchen – or the dispensary.
We all have the words or terms we love to hate, and the cybersecurity industry is certainly not immune. And it doesn’t take long before words can become buzz. And just because a word becomes a buzzword doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it – just tread wisely to ensure it accurately conveys what you’re describing and isn’t just hyperbole. Otherwise someone may be waiting in the eves – or exhibit hall – to call you buzz bluff.
