Monitoring Glossary

Browse 72 monitoring terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

72 Monitoring Terms

Access Log
A log recording attempts to access a system, service, application, or resource, typically including metadata such as user, time, source, and result. Access...
AI Monitor
A monitoring system, dashboard, or process used to watch AI behavior in production for issues such as drift, latency, errors, safety events, or quality...
Alert Fatigue
The desensitization and reduced response quality that occurs when analysts are overwhelmed by too many alerts, especially low-value or repetitive ones. Alert...
Anomaly Detection
Anomaly Detection is a detection approach that flags events, users, or systems that deviate from a learned baseline of normal behavior. Security teams use it...
Attack Surface Management
Attack Surface Management is the continuous discovery and reduction of internet-facing assets, exposures, misconfigurations, and shadow infrastructure....
Automated Threat Detection
Security detection performed automatically through rules, analytics, or machine-assisted logic rather than solely by human review. It is essential for scale,...
Canary Analysis
Automated statistical comparison between a canary deployment (new version, small traffic percentage) and the baseline (current version) to detect regressions...
Certificate Transparency
A system of public, append-only logs that record all TLS certificates issued by certificate authorities. Enables domain owners to detect unauthorized...
Cloud Monitoring
The observation of cloud resources, services, and workloads through metrics, logs, traces, and health signals provided by cloud-native or integrated monitoring...
Cloud Security Posture Management
Cloud Security Posture Management is continuous assessment of cloud resources against security baselines, identity risk, and configuration drift. Security...
Code Watchdog
A person or tool that actively watches for technical misbehavior, regressions, or policy violations. In engineering slang, code watchdogs exist to bark before...
Container Monitor
A monitoring tool or service that observes container health, resource use, restarts, and workload behavior across containerized environments. Container...
Continuous Monitoring
An ongoing process of collecting and reviewing security-relevant signals so issues can be detected, assessed, and acted on as environments change. Continuous...
CSPM
CSPM is cloud security posture management technology that continuously evaluates cloud resources against security baselines. Security teams use it to enforce...
Dashboard Culture
A team habit of centering work, decisions, and status around dashboards and visible metrics. Dashboard culture can improve alignment, but it can also encourage...
Database Activity Monitoring
The logging and analysis of database queries, sessions, privilege use, and anomalous behavior to detect misuse or support audits. Database activity monitoring...
Data Loss Prevention
Data Loss Prevention is technology and policy used to identify sensitive data and prevent unauthorized disclosure or movement. Security teams use it to enforce...
Deep Packet Inspection
Deep Packet Inspection is the examination of packet payloads and metadata beyond basic headers to enforce policy or detect abuse. Security teams use it to...
Detection Gap
A meaningful area of attacker behavior, system activity, or evidence collection that current monitoring cannot observe or alert on. Detection gaps are often...
DLP
DLP is data loss prevention technology that identifies sensitive data and enforces rules on transfer, storage, or sharing. Security teams use it to enforce...
File Integrity Monitoring
File Integrity Monitoring is continuous checking of important files for unauthorized change, deletion, or replacement. Security teams use it to enforce trust,...
Golden Signals
Google SRE's four essential monitoring metrics: Latency (time to serve a request), Traffic (demand on the system), Errors (rate of failed requests), and...
Health Check
An endpoint (typically /health or /healthz) that reports whether a service is running and ready to accept traffic. Used by load balancers, orchestrators, and...
Health Check Security
The practice of securing application or infrastructure health-check endpoints so they do not expose sensitive status data, bypass authentication, or become a...
HIDS
HIDS is a host-based intrusion detection capability that inspects activity on an individual system for malicious indicators. Security teams use it to enforce...
Honeynet
A network of decoy systems and services designed to attract attackers so defenders can observe their tools, behavior, and objectives in a controlled way....
Host-Based Intrusion Detection
Host-Based Intrusion Detection is intrusion detection performed on a single host by watching processes, files, logins, or configuration changes. Security teams...
IDS
IDS is technology that detects suspicious behavior or signatures on hosts or networks and alerts defenders. Security teams use it to enforce trust, reduce...
Incident Detection
The discovery of signs that a real security incident may be occurring or has occurred, through alerts, user reports, anomaly analysis, or other sources....
Infrastructure Monitoring
The collection and analysis of health, configuration, and activity data from servers, networks, cloud services, and other infrastructure components. In...
Integrity Monitoring
Integrity Monitoring is the ongoing verification that important data, files, or system states have not changed unexpectedly. Security teams use it to enforce...
Intrusion Detection System
Intrusion Detection System is a system that observes activity and alerts when patterns suggest malicious behavior or policy violations. Security teams use it...
LLMOps
The operational discipline around deploying, monitoring, evaluating, and maintaining large-language-model systems in production.
Login Attempt
A recorded event in which a user, device, or service tries to authenticate to a system, regardless of success or failure. Security teams monitor login attempts...
Log Monitoring
The continuous review of logs, either manually or through automated tooling, to detect suspicious activity, failures, or policy violations. Log monitoring is...
Metrics Collection
The practice of instrumenting applications and infrastructure to emit quantitative measurements — such as request latency, error rates, CPU usage, and queue...
Model Monitor
A monitoring system or process used to track model quality, latency, safety, or drift over time. Model monitors help catch degradation that benchmarks and...
Monitoring Agent
A software component installed on a system to collect telemetry, health metrics, logs, or security-relevant events and send them to a central platform....
Monitoring Rule
A defined condition that tells a monitoring system when to raise an alert, create a case, or record a notable event. Monitoring rules may be based on...
Netdata
A real-time monitoring tool for systems and applications that emphasizes live dashboards and fast setup.
Network Intrusion Detection
Network Intrusion Detection is monitoring of network traffic for malicious signatures, anomalies, or policy violations. Security teams use it to enforce trust,...
Network Probe
A device, service, or software sensor that observes and records network traffic, metadata, or protocol behavior for analysis. Network probes are used in IDS,...
Network Tap
Network Tap is a device or virtual mechanism that passively copies network traffic for analysis without being in the forwarding path. Security teams use it to...
Network Telemetry
Operational and security data collected from networks, such as flow records, packet data, DNS logs, connection metadata, and device events. Network telemetry...
NIDS
NIDS is a network-based intrusion detection capability that inspects traffic for malicious patterns or suspicious behavior. Security teams use it to enforce...
Observability
Observability is the ability to understand a system's internal state by examining its external outputs, primarily through three pillars: logs (event records),...
OctoPrint
An open-source web interface for monitoring and controlling 3D printers remotely.
Performance Budget
A set of quantitative limits on performance metrics — such as maximum JavaScript bundle size (e.g., 200 KB), total page weight, or time to interactive — that a...
Privileged Session
A login session in which administrative or other elevated permissions are actively being used to manage sensitive systems. Security teams often apply stronger...
Process Monitor
A tool or capability used to observe process behavior such as file access, registry changes, network activity, and execution events in detail. The term is...
Prometheus
An open-source systems monitoring and alerting toolkit, originally built at SoundCloud. Uses a pull-based model to scrape metrics endpoints, stores time-series...
Prometheus Alertmanager
The alert-routing component of the Prometheus ecosystem, used to group, deduplicate, and send alerts to notification channels.
Pull Model
A data retrieval pattern in which the consumer initiates requests to fetch data from the source at its own pace, rather than the source pushing data to...
Pulse
A periodic signal or lightweight health check emitted by a service or process to indicate it is alive and functioning. Unlike a full health check, a pulse (or...
Real-Time Alerting
The immediate generation and delivery of alerts as suspicious or important security events occur rather than through delayed batch review. Real-time alerting...
Real-Time Monitoring
The continuous observation of systems, identities, traffic, or applications with minimal delay so teams can see changes and suspicious activity as they happen....
Real-Time Protection
Protective security functionality that evaluates and blocks threats as files, processes, or traffic are encountered instead of only detecting them later. It is...
Recording Security
The protection of recorded security-relevant material such as session captures, call recordings, screen recordings, or surveillance footage so it cannot be...
RED Method
A monitoring methodology for request-driven services: Rate (requests per second), Errors (failed requests per second), and Duration (latency distribution)....
Remote Monitoring
The observation of systems, devices, or sites from another location using collected telemetry, logs, alerts, or management agents. In security, remote...
Risk Monitoring
The ongoing tracking of risk conditions, control effectiveness, threat changes, and remediation progress over time. Risk monitoring matters because a decision...
Sentry
An error tracking and application monitoring platform used to capture exceptions, crashes, and performance issues.
SIEM
Security Information and Event Management — a system that aggregates log data from across an organization's infrastructure, correlates events, and alerts...
Smoke Signal
A joking way to describe a weak or early indicator that something is going wrong in a system, process, or organization before the full incident is visible. It...
SOC
Security Operations Center — a dedicated facility or team that monitors, detects, analyzes, and responds to cybersecurity incidents around the clock, typically...
Syslog
A standard message format and transport convention for system and network device logging. It shows up in application security, identity, infrastructure, or...
Time Series
A sequence of data points indexed by timestamp, typically collected at regular intervals — used for metrics, sensor readings, and financial data, and stored in...
time-series database
A database optimized for storing and querying data points indexed by time, such as metrics, sensor readings, and financial ticks. Time-series databases use...
Time-Series Database
A database optimized for storing and querying timestamped data points — metrics, sensor readings, financial ticks. Uses time-based partitioning, compression,...
USE Method
A methodology for analyzing infrastructure performance: Utilization (how busy the resource is), Saturation (how much work is queued), and Errors (error...
Watchdog
A process, service, or person that watches for problems and intervenes when something goes wrong. In engineering slang, watchdogs are the guardians that keep...
Zabbix
An open-source monitoring platform for tracking servers, networks, applications, and operational alerts.

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