Passwords, Automation and AI in Security Operations

Glossary

175 terms from Passwords, Automation and AI in Security Operations, in plain words, each with the chapter that teaches it.

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--diff: An ansible-playbook option that shows the exact lines a task would change. A minus sign marks the line as it is now and a plus sign marks the line it should be, as when Alex saw PermitRootLogin yes about to become PermitRootLogin no.
--limit: An ansible-playbook option that runs a playbook on only some of the servers in the inventory. Alex used --limit pilot so only label-test changed while the real label server and file server were left alone.

A

access review: A regular check of whether each person should still have each permission. It is different from an account audit, which asks whether the account should exist at all and whether it is set up safely.
account auditing: Regularly reviewing every account to check that it should exist, is still used and has safe settings, usually by comparing the directory with the HR staff list. Alex's audit found Dana's orphaned account, Ben's admin account without MFA and the dormant temp-holiday account.
account lockout: A password policy setting that locks an account after a set number of wrong password tries. Kettle & Crane's standard locks an account after no more than 10 wrong tries, and Windows logs a lockout as event 4740.
agentic AI: AI that works toward a goal on its own, in several steps, using tools such as log searches or a ticket system, and choosing each next step from the last result. Unlike a playbook, it is not following fixed steps a person wrote, so it needs guardrails such as least privilege and human approval.
AI (Artificial Intelligence): Computer systems that do tasks which normally need human judgment, such as understanding language, spotting patterns or making predictions. Most security AI today is built on machine learning.
AI agent: A program that works the agentic way: it plans, uses a tool, looks at the result and decides what to do next until it reaches its goal or needs a person. For example, an agent can investigate Priya's 3 a.m. sign-in and propose a password reset for Alex to approve.
AI-augmented baseline: A picture of normal behavior that AI builds and updates by itself, separately for each user, device and time. Unlike a fixed limit, it flagged only the Sunday upload and not the nightly 1 a.m. backup, but people must review it so an attacker's activity doesn't get learned as normal.
alert fatigue: What happens when an alert fires so often for harmless activity that people stop paying attention to it. Alex started ignoring the 500 MB upload rule because it went off every night.
alert tuning: Adjusting detection rules so they still catch real problems without flooding people with harmless alerts (false positives). For example, a new-country sign-in rule can be tuned to allow planned trips instead of being switched off.
anomaly: Something that doesn't fit the usual pattern, such as a 3 a.m. sign-in to Priya's account from Romania when Priya normally signs in from the US during office hours.
anomaly detection: Automatically comparing activity with a baseline of normal and raising an alert, with a reason, when something falls outside it. It is a behavior-based (heuristic) method, unlike signature detection, which looks for known bad patterns.
Ansible: A free automation tool that reads playbooks, text files describing the result you want, and makes systems match them. Alex used it to create café upload folders and to keep the label server's SSH settings in their desired state.
ansible-playbook: The command that runs an Ansible playbook, for example ansible-playbook baseline.yml -e lab=lab. The -e option passes in a value, here the lab folder the playbook uses.
approval gate: A guardrail where a person must approve a high-impact action before it runs, such as blocking a whole domain or deleting data. It belongs on rare, high-impact actions, not on every small step.
automation: Making a task run by itself, on a schedule or when something happens, without a person clicking through it. Because it does the same steps the same way every time, it also repeats any mistake at machine speed.
automation logic: The decisions inside an automation: what conditions it checks, what order its steps run in, and what it does when something unexpected happens. Alex's first leaver script had a logic flaw because an empty HR list would have disabled every person's account.

B

banned password list: A list of known leaked and common passwords that the system checks whenever a password is set or changed, refusing any match. Kettle & Crane's policy report showed blocklist_check = no, which was a FAIL.
baseline: A record of what is normal for a user or system, such as Priya's usual sign-in hours, countries and laptop. Anomaly detection compares new activity with it to spot what doesn't fit. In configuration work, a security baseline instead means a set of approved settings that systems must match.
break-glass account: An emergency admin account kept for when normal sign-in fails. Automation should treat it as a protected item and never touch it.

C

chage: A Linux command, run as root, that shows or changes an account's password age and expiry settings. chage -l jo listed Jo's last password change and showed that Jo's password and account never expire.
change limits: A guardrail that caps how much an automation may change in one run, such as 'disable at most 2 accounts'. It stopped Alex's script when a half-exported HR list made five working staff look like leavers.
change management: The formal process for changing production systems: a request, approval, a maintenance window and a record. Alex raised a change request before rolling out the firewall playbook.
chatbot: An AI program you talk to in ordinary language that answers, explains, summarizes or drafts, while a person decides what to do with the answer. Kettle & Crane's staff chatbot answers questions from written procedures but cannot change accounts.
check mode: An Ansible mode, turned on with --check, that reports what a playbook would change without actually changing anything. It is Ansible's form of a dry run.
CI/CD (continuous integration and continuous deployment): A practice of automatically building, testing and releasing every change to code or configuration. The next book in the course, Security Operations and Incident Response in 50 Pages, teaches it.
complexity: How many parts, steps, conditions and connections an automation has. Too much makes it hard to understand, test and fix, and it grows fast: 6 tools linked directly need 15 connections.
compromised: A credential is compromised when someone who should not have it does, for example after a website breach, password-stealing malware or a phishing page.
compromised credential monitoring: Checking again and again whether users' credentials appear in leaked collections, both when a password is set and all the time afterward, then acting fast on a match. When Sam's password showed up in a leak, Alex forced a reset and signed Sam out of every session.
configparser: A Python library that reads INI-style settings files. Alex's policy report script used it to read the current values from policy.ini.
configuration drift: Differences from a system's intended settings that creep in over time, for example when someone tests something and forgets to undo it, an update resets a file, or an attacker weakens a setting. The label server's SSH setting going back to allowing root sign-in was drift.
considerations: The questions to ask before you automate anything. The objectives list guardrails, automation logic, process engineering, complexity, financial, process risks and deployment.
continuous improvement: Making a process a little better again and again, based on measurements, through a loop of run, measure, review and adjust. Kettle & Crane's anomaly rule went from 39 false positives a month to 2 this way.
credential: What proves who you are when you sign in, usually a username and a password.
credential stuffing: An attack where criminals try stolen username and password pairs on many other sites. It works because people reuse passwords.
CSV (comma-separated values): A plain text table where each line is a row and commas separate the columns. Kettle & Crane's directory exports its accounts to accounts.csv.
CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System): A score that rates how severe it would be if a vulnerability were exploited. It does not predict how likely an exploit is, which is what EPSS does, so the two are used together to decide what to patch first.

D

dark web: Websites that can only be reached with special software and are hard to trace. Criminals trade stolen credential lists there.
data leakage: The risk that whatever you paste into a chatbot is stored or used by its provider. Use an approved tool and never paste customer data or secrets into a public chatbot.
deduplicate: Adding a repeated alert to the ticket that is already open instead of opening a new one. Three malware alerts for Jo's laptop became one ticket, KC-101.
deployment: Putting automation into real use, safely and in stages: version control, a test environment, a dry run, a pilot, then full rollout with monitoring. It goes through change management and needs a rollback plan.
deprovisioning: Removing access or resources when they are no longer needed, such as disabling a leaver's accounts everywhere or deleting a forgotten test server.
desired state: A written description of how a system should be configured, for example 'PermitRootLogin no' on the label server.
desired state management: Letting a tool check a real system against its desired state again and again, fix any differences and report what it changed. Alex ran the baseline playbook every 30 minutes to undo drift on the label server.
directory: The system that holds every staff account and checks every sign-in. Kettle & Crane uses one cloud directory.
dormant account: An account that has not signed in for a long time, often 90 days. The temp-holiday account had been idle for 297 days.
downtime: Time when a system or service is not working and people can't use it, such as the label server's print service being stopped so parcels miss the truck.
dry run: A guardrail mode in which automation reports what it would do without doing it. Alex's leaver script printed 'would disable dana' until it was run with --apply.

E

EDR (endpoint detection and response): A security tool with an agent on each device that detects threats such as malware and can respond, for example by isolating a laptop.
efficiency/time saving: An intended outcome in which the same task takes less time and effort, counting both staff time and response time. The phishing playbook cut the time from report to removal from about 50 minutes to about 2.
enforcing baselines: An intended outcome in which every system keeps matching its approved security baseline, with drift fixed and reported. It is measured as the share of systems that comply.
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System): A machine-learning score, run by FIRST, that gives each published vulnerability a probability from 0 to 1 that it will be exploited in the next 30 days. It is updated daily and is used alongside CVSS to choose what to patch first.
errors at scale: A process risk in which one mistake is repeated everywhere, fast, such as a bad rule deleting a real invoice email from all 14 inboxes.
excessive agency: An OWASP top risk for LLM applications: an AI that has more tools, rights or freedom than its task needs.
exfiltration: Data being secretly sent out of the company. An unusually large amount of outgoing data can be a sign of it.

F

fail safe: A logic habit: when something is wrong, stop and alert a person instead of guessing. Alex's script stops with 'HR list is empty; refusing to run'.
fallback: A documented manual way to do a job while the automation is broken, plus an alert when the automation stops. It is not the same as a rollback, which undoes a bad deployment.
false negative: A real problem that an alert misses, such as a 300 MB Sunday upload that stays under a fixed 500 MB limit.
false positive: An alert about activity that turns out to be fine, such as the nightly backup tripping a fixed upload limit. Too many of them and people stop reading alerts.
file permission modes (0750, 0600): Linux codes that say who may use a file or folder. 0750 gives the owner full access, the group read access and other users none; 0600 lets only the owner read and write.
financial: The automation consideration that weighs one-time and ongoing costs against the staff time saved and the risk reduced. The phishing playbook paid back in about 4.2 months, while a $1,500-a-month platform for a 2-hour audit never would.
FIRST (Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams): A global organization of incident response and security teams. It runs EPSS.
fixed threshold: An alert rule that uses one number for everything, such as 'more than 500 MB an hour'. It can fire on normal activity (the nightly backup) and miss unusual activity that stays under it, which is why learned baselines do better.
forced password reset: Making a user set a new password at once so the old one stops working. It is the first step when a credential is found in a leak or an account looks compromised, followed by ending all sessions and checking sign-in logs.

G

gather_facts: An Ansible playbook setting. gather_facts: false skips Ansible's survey of the machine when the playbook doesn't need it.
Git: A version control system that records every change to a script or playbook so you can return to any earlier version, for example to roll back.
guardrail: A limit built into automation that stops it from doing harm even when its input is wrong or its logic has a bug. Examples are scope and change limits, protected items, dry runs, approval gates, least privilege, a kill switch and logging.

H

hallucination: When an AI states something wrong with confidence, such as a log field or event number that doesn't exist. Check the facts before acting on them.
happy path: The normal case in which input is complete and nothing goes wrong. Good automation is also tested with bad cases, such as a short or empty HR list.
hash: A fixed-length fingerprint of data that can't be turned back into the original. It lets a password be checked against leak lists without revealing it.
hashlib: Python's built-in module for computing hashes such as SHA-1 and SHA-256. For example, `hashlib.sha1(password.encode()).hexdigest()` turns a password into the hash used for a k-anonymity breach check.
Have I Been Pwned: A website whose free Pwned Passwords service checks passwords against leaked data using k-anonymity. It also offers domain alerts when company email addresses appear in new breaches.
heuristic detection: Detection based on behavior that departs from normal rather than on known bad signatures. Anomaly detection belongs to this family.
hosts: localhost: Lines at the top of an Ansible playbook that say where to run. hosts: localhost with connection: local means run on this computer, and hosts: servers means run on the servers group in the inventory.
HR (Human Resources): The department and system that records who works at the company. Its staff list is the source of truth for account audits and provisioning.
human in the loop: A guardrail in which a person approves high-impact actions, such as disabling accounts or blocking a domain, before an automation or AI agent carries them out.

I

IaC (Infrastructure as Code): Describing infrastructure in text files that a tool turns into real resources. It is the template idea behind resource provisioning.
idempotent: Describes a tool or script that changes nothing when the system is already right, so running it once or a hundred times has the same result. That is why the baseline playbook can safely run every 30 minutes.
impossible travel: Sign-ins from two places that are too far apart for the time between them, such as Priya's account signing in from the US and Romania 30 minutes apart.
increased proactivity: An intended outcome in which automation lets the team find and fix weaknesses before an incident, for example through scheduled audits, EPSS-based patching and threat hunting. It is measured as the share of problems found by the team's own checks.
INI file: A simple settings file where a heading in square brackets, such as [current], starts a section and each line below it is a setting and its value.
integration: A connection that lets one tool talk to another. Direct links grow fast, as n × (n − 1) ÷ 2, so a hub such as a SOAR platform, which needs only one link per tool, keeps complexity down.
intended outcomes: The results automation should bring and that you can measure: efficiency/time saving, enforcing baselines, continuous improvements, productivity improvements, reduced downtime and increased proactivity.
inventory: An Ansible file that lists servers in groups, such as pilot and main. A :children section builds a bigger group, here servers, out of smaller ones.
inventory_hostname: An Ansible variable that holds the name of the server the task is running on, so each server can get its own file, such as lab/label-test.conf.
IP (Internet Protocol) address: The numeric address of a device on a network. Alex's blocking playbook protects the office's own address so it is never blocked.

J

joiner, mover, leaver: The three events in a person's working life that change their access: a new hire (joiner), a job change inside the company (mover, who must also lose the old access) and someone leaving (leaver, whose access must end everywhere on their last day).

K

k-anonymity: A way to check a password against a leak list without revealing it: only the first 5 characters of its hash are sent, the service returns every leaked hash starting with them, and the comparison happens on your own computer.
kill switch: A guardrail that gives you one simple way to stop an automation at once. It is usually paired with a log of every action the automation took.

L

least privilege: Giving an account, script or AI agent only the rights its task needs. A script that disables accounts doesn't need the right to delete them, and a triage agent only needs to read logs.
lessons learned: A meeting after an incident to record what went well, what failed and what to change, which then feeds improvements back into the playbooks.
linear_regression: A function in Python's statistics library that fits a straight line through data points. Alex used it to forecast that the label server's disk would reach 95% on day 27.
lineinfile: An Ansible module that makes sure a given line is in a file, using a regexp to find the line to replace. A different module, ansible.builtin.file, makes sure a file or folder exists and sets its permission mode.
LLM (Large Language Model): A kind of AI that reads and writes text. Modern chatbots are built on one.

M

machine learning: An approach to AI in which a program learns patterns from examples instead of following rules a person wrote. EPSS and AI-augmented baselines use it.
maintenance window: An agreed time set aside for making changes to production systems, as part of change management.
mean time to detect: The average time from a problem starting to someone knowing about it.
mean time to respond: The average time from knowing about a problem to fixing it. On the exam it is usually written out and should not be confused with MTTR, which means mean time to repair.
MFA (multifactor authentication): Sign-in that asks for a second proof, such as a code on a phone, as well as the password. Admins without it, like Ben, are an audit finding.
Microsoft Entra ID Protection: A Microsoft directory feature whose 'leaked credentials' detection compares credentials found on the dark web, paste sites and code sites with directory passwords and marks a match as high risk.
MTTR (mean time to repair): The average time it takes to fix a failed system and get it working again. It is a measure of reduced downtime.

N

NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology): The US agency that publishes guidance on passwords and other security topics.
NIST SP 800-63B-4: NIST's password guidance, published in August 2025. It requires checking new passwords against compromised and common ones, and forcing a change when there is evidence of compromise instead of on a fixed schedule.

O

orchestration: Connecting several automated tasks across different tools into one flow that runs in the right order. A SOAR playbook is an example.
orphaned account: An account whose owner has left but which is still enabled, like Dana's. The first step is to disable it, not delete it.
OWASP (Open Worldwide Application Security Project): An open security community. It lists excessive agency as a top risk for LLM applications.

P

password expiration: Forcing users to change their password after a fixed number of days, such as every 90. Current NIST guidance drops scheduled expiry and forces a change only when there is evidence of compromise.
password manager: A tool that stores passwords. A team password manager's 'exposed passwords' report flags saved passwords that appear in breaches.
password policy: The set of rules a system enforces for passwords, such as minimum length, a blocklist check and how many wrong tries lock the account.
PasswordAuthentication: An SSH server setting. Setting it to no means passwords are refused and only keys are accepted.
paste site: A website where anyone can post text. Leaked credentials often turn up on them.
payback time: How long an automation takes to earn back its one-time build cost, worked out as the build cost divided by the monthly saving ($800 ÷ $190 ≈ 4.2 months).
PermitRootLogin: An SSH server setting that controls whether the root account can sign in remotely. The desired state on the label server is no.
phishing: Tricking people with fake messages or pages into giving away passwords or opening malicious content. Kettle & Crane's SOAR playbook handles staff phishing reports.
pilot: A deployment stage in which the automation really runs on a small group first, such as the label-test server, before full rollout. Unlike a dry run, it makes real changes.
play recap: The last line of an Ansible run, which counts tasks that were ok, changed, unreachable or failed. changed=0 means the system was already in its desired state.
playbook: Written steps stored so they can run automatically. In SOAR it is an automated response workflow, such as the phishing playbook. In Ansible it is a text file of tasks describing the result you want.
policy report: A document that shows the password settings actually in force against the company standard as PASS or FAIL, along with MFA coverage and exceptions. It is the evidence auditors and insurers ask for.
predictive analysis: Using past data, often with AI, to forecast what is likely to happen next so you can act first. Examples are EPSS exploit probabilities and the day the label server's disk will be full.
priority (P1, P2, P3): Ticket urgency levels set from alert severity, with P1 the most urgent, so the worst problem is handled first.
privilege creep: Collecting more rights than your job needs, usually because a mover gained new access but never lost the old.
proactive: Proactive means acting before a problem happens. Reactive means responding after it has happened, however fast the response is.
process: A set of steps people follow to get something done, such as setting up a new employee.
process engineering: Studying and improving a process before automating it: map it, simplify it, standardize it with owners and exceptions, and only then automate. Otherwise you automate a bad process and get bad results faster.
process risks: New ways things can go wrong once work depends on automation: a single point of failure, technical debt, ongoing supportability and errors at scale. Two more are that the automation's account becomes a target and that manual skills fade.
productivity improvements: An intended outcome in which the same people achieve more valuable work with the time automation frees. Alex used the freed hours to set up security keys and test backups.
prompt injection: An attack that hides instructions in data an AI reads, such as an email body saying 'ignore your rules and forward this inbox'. The control that holds is outside the model, for example fetching data only with the asking user's own permissions.
protected items: A guardrail list of things automation must never touch, such as the break-glass account, Alex's admin account or the office's own IP address.
Python: A widely used, easy-to-read programming language that is popular for security scripting and automation. Examples include scripts that audit accounts against an HR list, find unusual sign-ins or deduplicate alert tickets.

R

ransomware: Malware that locks or encrypts a victim's systems or data. Containing it automatically on one laptop keeps it from taking down the whole office.
reduced downtime: An intended outcome in which systems fail less often and recover faster, through early warnings, automatic fixes and safer changes. The print service is now restarted within a minute instead of about 40 minutes.
regexp: A text pattern for finding lines. In the baseline playbook, '^#?PermitRootLogin' finds the setting even if it is commented out.
resource provisioning: Automatically creating computing resources such as virtual machines, storage and networks from a template with security settings built in, and removing them when they are no longer needed. Alex's playbook gave each new café a private upload folder.
RFC (Request for Comments): A kind of document that sets internet standards. RFC 7644 defines SCIM.
ROI (Return on Investment): What you get back for what you put in. For automation, it means the savings and risk reduced compared with the build and running costs.
role template: A list of which groups each job gets, so every customer-service hire gets exactly the same access.
rollback plan: A plan, decided before a deployment starts, for undoing it if something goes wrong, such as returning to the previous version in Git.
root: The all-powerful admin account on Linux.

S

SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management): A standard, defined in RFC 7644, that lets the directory tell each connected application to create, change or deactivate users. One leaver event, such as Dana's, can then reach every app within minutes.
scope limits: A guardrail that lets automation touch only certain things, such as these accounts, this server group or this folder, and refuses anything else.
script: A short program that does one task, such as Alex's account audit. Scripting means writing such programs.
secrets vault: A secure store for passwords and keys, so they are not written into scripts, where a hard-coded password would be easy to steal.
security baseline: The approved set of settings every system of a type must have, such as SSH blocking root sign-in. It describes configuration, not behavior.
Security event log: The Windows log that records account changes under fixed event numbers an audit can search for: 4720 (account created), 4726 (deleted), 4738 (changed) and 4740 (locked out).
security key: A physical device used as a strong second factor for MFA. Alex set these up for the three admins.
service account: An account used by a program rather than a person, such as svc-backup for the backup software. Its password should be rotated on a schedule, and automations should run under one with only the rights they need.
session: A sign-in that stays open on a device. After a leak you end all sessions so an attacker who is already signed in is thrown out.
SHA-1 (Secure Hash Algorithm 1): A hash algorithm that is too weak for signing documents but fine for lookups. Pwned Passwords uses it.
shared account: One username used by several people. The fix is to give each person their own account.
SIEM (Security Information and Event Management): The tool that collects logs and alerts from many systems so they can be searched. A chatbot can turn a plain question into a SIEM search.
signature detection: Detection that matches a known bad pattern, such as a known malware file, rather than comparing activity with a baseline of normal.
single point of failure: One part, or one person, whose failure stops the whole process, such as the phishing playbook's server going down or only Alex knowing how things work.
single sign-on: Letting one directory sign-in give access to many applications, so disabling the directory account cuts off the shop admin too.
SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response): A product that connects security tools, receives their alerts and runs automated playbooks, for example to delete a phishing email from every inbox and open a ticket. It also works as a hub that cuts integration complexity.
social engineering: Manipulating people, or a chatbot, into doing something unsafe, such as resetting a password just because someone asked politely.
source of truth: The one trusted record that other systems follow. For accounts it is usually the HR system, because HR always knows first.
SSH (Secure Shell): The encrypted way to sign in to a server remotely. The label server's SSH must block root sign-in and refuse passwords.
sshd_config: The SSH server's settings file, which the baseline playbook manages and makes private with mode 0600.
supportability: Whether an automation can be kept running over time: documented, owned by a named person with a backup, built with familiar tools and updated as connected tools change.
SY0-801: The exam code for a version of the CompTIA Security+ certification exam, which tests core cybersecurity knowledge. Its objectives include 4.5, identity and access management, and 4.6, automation and orchestration in security operations.
sys.argv: The Python list holding the words typed after a script's name, used here to read the HR file name and the --apply flag.
sys.exit: A Python call that stops a script with a message, as when Alex's script stops because an HR list is empty or too many accounts would be disabled.

T

technical debt: Shortcuts and old code that pile up and make later changes harder and riskier, such as three slightly different copies of the audit script or a password hard-coded 'for now'.
template: A text file that describes how a resource should be built, with security settings written in once so every resource built from it gets them. A storage template, for example, makes every new space private, encrypted and tagged with an owner and an end date.
test environment: Copies of systems kept separate from real (production) ones, where automation is tried first. Test copies are never exactly like production, so a pilot still follows.
threat hunting: Searching logs for signs of an attacker that no alert has caught yet. Automation can run these searches every day.
ticket: A record of one piece of work, such as an alert, request or problem, with an ID, priority, owner and status.
ticket management: Automation that creates, deduplicates, prioritizes, routes, updates and closes tickets without anyone typing them, so an important phishing report isn't buried under 60 'printer offline' alerts.
triage: The first look at alerts to sort out what matters and how urgent it is. A triage agent only needs to read logs, not delete them.

U

UEBA (user and entity behavior analytics): Tools that build AI-augmented baselines of normal behavior for users and devices and flag what departs from them.
uptime: The time a system or service is working and available, used as a measure of reduced downtime.
user provisioning: Creating a person's accounts and giving them the access their job needs, and changing or removing it as they move or leave, driven automatically from the HR system. Role templates give each job the same groups, and standards such as SCIM carry the changes to every application.

V

version control: A system that records every change to scripts and playbooks so you can see who changed what and return to any earlier version.
virtual machine: A software computer that runs on real hardware. It is one of the resources that resource provisioning builds from templates.