Attack surface
The systems, identities, interfaces, and trust paths that could provide a way to affect an environment.
Glossary
Security terms without decorative jargon.
Definitions are written for the way Blackpine uses these terms in services, research, reports, and incident work. They are short references, not substitutes for the full technical context.
BEC
Business email compromise: misuse of a business identity or mailbox to influence communications, payments, access, or trust.
CSP
Content Security Policy: a browser policy that restricts which sources a web page may load or execute.
DFIR
Digital forensics and incident response: preserving and analyzing evidence while containing and recovering from an incident.
DKIM
A domain-level email signing mechanism that lets receiving systems verify that a message was signed by an authorized domain key.
DMARC
A policy and reporting layer that builds on SPF and DKIM to help domain owners control and observe email authentication.
DNS
The naming system that maps domain names to services and records such as websites and mail routing.
IAM
Identity and access management: the systems and processes used to establish identities and control what they can access.
Incident
A security event that requires investigation or response because confidentiality, integrity, availability, or control may be affected.
Least privilege
Giving an identity only the access it needs for its current responsibility rather than broad standing access.
MFA
Multi-factor authentication: authentication that requires more than one independent factor.
Pentest
Penetration test: authorized active testing intended to demonstrate whether defined attack paths can be exploited.
Privileged account
An identity able to make security-relevant or high-impact administrative changes.
Recovery path
The people, systems, and procedures that can restore access or control when normal authentication or operation fails.
Risk acceptance
A documented decision to retain a known risk rather than remediate, transfer, or avoid it at that time.
SOC
Security operations center: a function responsible for monitoring, triage, escalation, and operational security response.
SPF
A DNS-based mechanism that declares which sending systems are authorized for a domain.
Threat model
A structured description of assets, trust boundaries, adversary capabilities, attack paths, and assumptions relevant to a system.
Vulnerability
A weakness that can contribute to an unwanted security outcome when the required conditions are present.
Zero trust
An architectural approach that avoids granting trust solely because a user or device is inside a traditional network boundary.