Cybersecurity glossary
Clear, practical definitions of the security terms you'll meet on Purple Edge - each with context on how to practice it hands-on.
Blue teaming
Blue teaming is the defensive side of cybersecurity, focused on detecting, analyzing, responding to, and recovering from attacks while continuously hardening systems against future intrusions.
Capture the Flag (CTF)
A Capture the Flag (CTF) is a cybersecurity competition in which players solve hands-on security challenges to find hidden strings called flags, earning points that prove they exploited or analyzed each target.
DFIR (Digital Forensics & Incident Response)
DFIR (Digital Forensics and Incident Response) is the combined practice of investigating digital evidence and coordinating the response to a cybersecurity incident, so an organization can understand what happened, contain it, and recover.
Lateral movement
Lateral movement is the set of techniques attackers use to pivot from an initially compromised system to other hosts and accounts across a network, expanding access toward their objective.
MITRE ATT&CK framework
The MITRE ATT&CK framework is a globally accessible, continuously updated knowledge base of real-world adversary tactics and techniques, organized so defenders can map, detect, and respond to attacker behavior.
Network security monitoring
Network security monitoring (NSM) is the continuous collection, analysis, and escalation of network traffic and metadata to detect and respond to intrusions that have evaded preventive controls.
OSINT (Open-Source Intelligence)
OSINT (Open-Source Intelligence) is the collection and analysis of information from publicly available sources, such as websites, social media, public records, and metadata, to produce actionable intelligence.
Penetration testing
Penetration testing (pentesting) is an authorized, simulated cyberattack against a system, network, or application, performed to discover and safely exploit security weaknesses before malicious attackers can.
Privilege escalation
Privilege escalation is the act of exploiting a flaw, misconfiguration, or design weakness to gain higher permissions than were originally granted, for example moving from a normal user to administrator or root.
Purple teaming
Purple teaming is a collaborative exercise in which the offensive red team and defensive blue team work together in real time, so that attacks are executed and detections are validated and improved in the same loop.
Red teaming
Red teaming is a goal-oriented adversary simulation in which security professionals emulate a real threat actor end to end to test how well an organization can detect, respond to, and withstand a realistic attack.
Reverse shell
A reverse shell is a remote shell connection in which the target machine initiates an outbound connection back to the attacker, who is listening, giving the attacker command-line control of the target.
Put this into practice
Spin up real Kali, Ubuntu and Windows labs in your browser and learn by doing. Guided, hands-on, no setup.