Glossary

Phishing

An email, text message or phone call that pretends to be something trustworthy, like your bank, your accountant or Microsoft, to make you click, log in or pay. Most cyberattacks on SMEs start here.

Business Email Compromise (BEC)

A scam in which an attacker poses as your CEO, supplier or customer and asks for a payment or a change of account numbers. The email looks perfect, because it often comes from a real, hijacked account.

Check with our free email scan whether your domain can be abused for this kind of trick.

Ransomware

Malware that encrypts your files and demands a ransom. Stolen data is increasingly used as leverage too: pay up, or your company data gets leaked publicly.

Attack path

The route an attacker walks step by step, from first access (for example one installed app or one leaked password) to where it hurts: domain admin, financial data, your entire environment.

We explain it in Attack Paths in Microsoft Defender.

Backup (the 3-2-1 rule)

Three copies of your data, on two different media, one of them off-site or offline. When ransomware encrypts your environment, a backup the attacker cannot reach is the difference between an annoying week and the end of the business.

Incident response

The plan and the approach for when things do go wrong: who does what, who calls whom, how you recover. An organisation without an incident response plan does not have a plan when an incident hits, it has panic.

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

Logging in with more than one proof: something you know (a password) plus something you have (a phone or authenticator app) or something you are (a fingerprint). MFA stops most login attempts, but not all of them.

Read MFA is not a wall: how hackers hijack your session tokens for the next step.

Passwordless sign-in

Logging in with a passkey, Windows Hello or the Authenticator app instead of a password. It sounds less safe, but it is safer: there is no password left that can be stolen or reused.

Conditional Access

Rules in Microsoft 365 that judge every login attempt: from which device, from where, how safe the connection is. Based on those signals Microsoft allows access, demands extra verification or blocks it. Without Conditional Access the door is open to everyone.

Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory)

Microsoft's central register of users, groups and rights. Who logs in, which apps someone sees, which device is trusted: it all happens in Entra ID. Almost every security setting in Microsoft 365 starts here.

Zero Trust

The security model that trusts no one by default, not even inside your own network. Every access has to be proven again and again. It used to be assumed that everything behind the firewall was safe; those days are over.

Endpoint

Any device someone uses to reach your company data: laptop, desktop, phone, tablet. Most attacks reach your environment through an endpoint, not through the server.

Microsoft Intune

Microsoft's cloud service for centrally managing and securing devices: enforcing settings, distributing apps, wiping devices when lost. The backbone of a modern, managed workplace.

Our guide De digitale werkplek voor de KMO (in Dutch) explains how it all fits together.

Hardening

Actively sealing a system: unnecessary features off, secure settings on. Hardening takes a one-time effort and permanently reduces the attack surface.

Patch management

Making sure all your software is up to date, systematically and provably. Most successful attacks exploit a vulnerability that had been known for months and could have been closed long ago.

EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response)

Security software on devices that spots suspicious behaviour, like a laptop that suddenly starts encrypting files, and immediately blocks and responds. Where classic antivirus watches for known files, EDR watches behaviour.

Data Loss Prevention (DLP)

Technology that recognises when sensitive data, like customer data, invoices or medical information, leaves the organisation via email, cloud or USB stick, and blocks or logs it.

Microsoft Purview

Microsoft's compliance suite: classifying, labelling and protecting data, and tracking who does what with it. For anyone who needs provability, for example around NIS2, Purview makes that workable.

Microsoft 365 Copilot

The AI assistant in Microsoft 365 that reads along with your email, documents and Teams conversations and helps draft, summarise and automate. Watch out: Copilot uses the user's permissions. Anyone with too much access gets instant insight into everything through Copilot.

AI Governance

The rulebook for using AI tools responsibly: what Copilot may see, what may go into prompts, what AI may decide on its own. AI governance is not a choice between AI or no AI, but between guided and unguided.

Read AI: a double-edged sword for cybersecurity.

Shadow IT / Shadow AI

Tools and services employees use without IT knowing: a free PDF converter, an AI note-taker, their own cloud drive. Every unapproved tool is a door you do not control.

NIS2

The European cybersecurity directive that obliges organisations in eighteen sectors to manage cyber risks, record managerial responsibility and report incidents. For many SMEs NIS2 is no longer theory, but something customers and auditors ask about today.

Read NIS2 for SMEs: no longer theory.

CyberFundamentals (CyFun)

Belgium's official security framework from the CCB: a concrete checklist of baseline measures, in three levels. Anyone doing a security audit with us sees their score against this framework.

ISMS (Information Security Management System)

The management system in which you structure your security: policy, roles, risks, measures and improvement paths. Paperwork? It is the difference between "we do our best" and "we can prove it".

vCISO (virtual Chief Information Security Officer)

An external security director who fills the role on fixed days or a project basis. That way an SME gets strategic security leadership without paying a full-time director's salary. We fill this role for customers today.

Microsoft Secure Score

The score in Microsoft 365 that shows how far your environment is removed from the recommended security settings. A good measuring stick for the question: where do we stand?

We explain it in Microsoft Secure Score & Exposure Score.

Exposure Score

The view in Microsoft Defender of how exposed your organisation is: which weak spots an attacker sees. Where Secure Score looks inward, at your settings, the Exposure Score looks outward, at your risk.