Glossary of Terms

Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning

Accuracy: The proportion of correctly classified instances out of the total instances in a dataset. It is a common metric for evaluating classification models.

Activation Function: A mathematical function applied to the output of a neuron in a neural network to introduce non-linearity, enabling the model to learn complex patterns.

Algorithm: A set of rules or instructions for solving a problem or performing a task. In AI, algorithms are used to process data and make decisions.

Algorithm: A set of rules or steps followed to solve a problem or perform a task. In machine learning, algorithms process data to learn patterns and make predictions.

Algorithmic Bias: Systematic errors in machine learning algorithms that arise from biases in the data or model, potentially leading to unfair or discriminatory outcomes.

Anomaly Detection: Identifying unusual patterns or outliers in data that do not conform to expected behavior, often used for fraud detection or quality control.

Artificial Intelligence (AI): The field of computer science focused on creating systems that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as understanding language, recognizing patterns, and making decisions.

Artificial Intelligence (AI): The simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, particularly computer systems, including learning, reasoning, and self-correction.

AUC (Area Under the Curve): A metric that summarizes the overall performance of a classification model by measuring the area under the ROC curve.

Autoencoder: A neural network used to learn efficient representations of data, typically for dimensionality reduction or feature learning, by encoding and then decoding the input data.

Backpropagation: An algorithm used for training neural networks by calculating gradients of the loss function and adjusting weights through gradient descent.

Bagging: An ensemble technique that combines the predictions of multiple models trained on different subsets of the training data to reduce variance.

Batch Size: The number of training examples used in one iteration of model training, affecting the training process and performance.

Bias: A systematic error introduced into a machine learning model due to flawed data, incorrect assumptions, or other factors. Bias can affect the fairness and accuracy of predictions.

Bias: An error introduced into the model due to assumptions made during the learning process, potentially leading to systematic deviations in predictions.

Big Data: Extremely large data sets that may be analyzed computationally to reveal patterns, trends, and associations, especially relating to human behavior and interactions.

Boosting: An ensemble method that combines weak models sequentially, where each new model corrects errors made by the previous ones, improving accuracy.

Classification: A type of supervised learning where the goal is to predict categorical labels for new data based on training data with known labels.

Clustering: An unsupervised learning technique used to group similar data points together based on their features without predefined labels.

Convolutional Neural Network (CNN): A type of deep neural network specifically designed for processing structured grid data like images by applying convolutional layers.

Cross-Entropy Loss: A loss function commonly used for classification problems, measuring the difference between the predicted probability distribution and the true distribution.

Cross-Validation: A technique for assessing how the results of a statistical analysis will generalize to an independent dataset, often used to prevent overfitting.

Cross-Validation: A technique for assessing the performance of a model by splitting the data into multiple subsets, training and validating the model on different subsets to ensure generalization.

Data Augmentation: Techniques used to artificially increase the size of a dataset by creating modified versions of existing data, often used in image processing.

Data Imputation: The process of filling in missing or incomplete data with estimated values to improve dataset quality and model performance.

Data Science: An interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms, and systems to extract knowledge and insights from structured and unstructured data.

DBSCAN (Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise): An unsupervised clustering algorithm that groups points based on their density, identifying clusters of varying shapes.

Decision Tree: A model used for classification and regression tasks that splits the data into branches to make decisions based on feature values.

Deep Learning: A subset of machine learning involving neural networks with many layers (deep networks) that can learn complex patterns in large amounts of data.

Dimensionality Reduction: Techniques like PCA and t-SNE used to reduce the number of features in a dataset while retaining essential information.

Dimensionality Reduction: The process of reducing the number of features in a dataset while retaining as much information as possible, often using techniques like PCA (Principal Component Analysis).

Dropout: A regularization technique used in neural networks where random neurons are dropped during training to prevent overfitting.

Ensemble Learning: A method that combines multiple models to produce a better overall performance than any single model could achieve alone.

Ensemble Methods: Techniques that combine multiple models to improve predictive performance, such as bagging, boosting, and stacking.

Epoch: One complete pass through the entire training dataset during the training of a machine learning model.

Explainable AI (XAI): Techniques and methods designed to make the decisions and workings of AI models more understandable and interpretable to humans.

Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA): The process of analyzing data sets to summarize their main characteristics, often with visual methods, before applying machine learning models.

F1 Score: A metric that combines precision and recall into a single value, providing a balance between the two.

Feature Engineering: The process of selecting, modifying, or creating features (variables) from raw data to improve the performance of machine learning models.

Feature Engineering: The process of using domain knowledge to create new features or modify existing ones to improve the performance of machine learning models.

Feature Extraction: The process of transforming raw data into a set of features that can be used for machine learning models.

Feature Selection: The process of choosing the most relevant features for building a model, reducing dimensionality and improving performance.

Fine-Tuning: Adjusting the parameters of a pre-trained model to better fit a new dataset or task by continuing the training process with the new data.

Generative Adversarial Network (GAN): A framework where two neural networks, a generator and a discriminator, compete to improve the quality of generated data.

Generative Models: Models that generate new data instances similar to the training data, including GANs and Variational Autoencoders (VAEs).

Gradient Descent: An optimization algorithm used to minimize the loss function in training machine learning models by iteratively adjusting the model’s parameters.

Hyperparameters: Parameters set before the training process begins, such as learning rate or number of hidden layers in a neural network. They are not learned from the data but are tuned to optimize model performance.

Hyperparameters: Parameters that are set before the training process begins and control the learning process of machine learning models, such as learning rate and number of layers.

K-Means Clustering: An unsupervised learning algorithm that partitions data into K clusters by minimizing the variance within each cluster.

Learning Rate: A hyperparameter that controls how much to change the model in response to the estimated error each time the model weights are updated.

Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM): A type of RNN designed to remember long-term dependencies and patterns in sequential data, mitigating the vanishing gradient problem.

Loss Function: A mathematical function used to measure the difference between the predicted output of a model and the actual output, guiding the training process.

Machine Learning: A subset of artificial intelligence where systems learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed, using algorithms to analyze data, identify patterns, and make decisions or predictions based on new data.

Model Interpretability: The degree to which a human can understand the reasons behind a model's predictions or decisions, essential for trust and validation.

Model Training: The process of feeding data into a machine learning algorithm to enable it to learn from and make predictions or decisions.

Model: A mathematical representation learned from data that can make predictions or decisions based on new, unseen data.

Natural Language Processing (NLP): A field of AI that enables computers to understand, interpret, and respond to human language in a valuable way.

Neural Networks: Computational models inspired by the human brain’s network of neurons, used to recognize patterns and make predictions.

Normalization: The process of scaling features to a standard range, often to improve the performance and stability of machine learning algorithms.

One-Hot Encoding: A method of converting categorical data into a binary matrix where each category is represented as a separate column with binary values.

Overfitting: A modeling error that occurs when a machine learning algorithm captures noise or random fluctuations in the training data rather than the underlying pattern.

Overfitting: A situation where a model learns the training data too well, including its noise and outliers, resulting in poor performance on new data.

Precision: A metric that measures the proportion of true positive predictions out of all positive predictions made by the model.

Precision: In classification, the proportion of true positive predictions out of all positive predictions made by the model.

Predictive Analytics: Techniques that use statistical algorithms and machine learning to identify the likelihood of future outcomes based on historical data.

Principal Component Analysis (PCA): A statistical technique used to simplify a dataset by reducing its dimensions while preserving as much variance as possible.

Random Forest: An ensemble learning method that uses multiple decision trees to improve the accuracy and robustness of predictions.

Recall: A metric that measures the proportion of true positive predictions out of all actual positive cases in the dataset.

Recall: In classification, the proportion of true positive predictions out of all actual positive instances in the dataset.

Recurrent Neural Network (RNN): A type of neural network designed for sequential data, where connections between nodes can create cycles, allowing the model to maintain a form of memory.

Regression: A type of supervised learning where the goal is to predict continuous values rather than categorical labels.

Reinforcement Learning: A type of machine learning where an agent learns to make decisions by interacting with an environment and receiving rewards or penalties based on its actions.

Reinforcement Learning: An area of machine learning where an agent learns to make decisions by performing actions and receiving rewards or penalties.

ROC Curve: A graphical representation of a model’s performance across different thresholds, plotting the true positive rate against the false positive rate.

Shallow Learning: Machine learning methods that use simple models with fewer layers or parameters, contrasting with deep learning approaches.

Stacking: An ensemble learning technique that combines multiple models by training a meta-model to make final predictions based on the outputs of the base models.

Standardization: The process of transforming features to have a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one, helping to standardize the input data.

Supervised Learning: A type of machine learning where the model is trained on labeled data, meaning that the input data comes with corresponding output labels.

Supervised Learning: A type of machine learning where the model is trained on labeled data, meaning the outcomes are known, to predict outcomes for new data.

Support Vector Machine (SVM): A supervised learning algorithm used for classification and regression tasks by finding the hyperplane that best separates different classes.

Test Set: A separate portion of the dataset used to assess the final performance of a trained model to evaluate its predictive power.

Tokenization: The process of breaking text into smaller units (tokens) like words or phrases, often used in natural language processing.

Transfer Learning: A technique where a pre-trained model on one task is adapted to perform well on a different but related task, leveraging existing knowledge.

Tuning: The process of adjusting model parameters and hyperparameters to optimize performance and achieve better results.

Underfitting: When a machine learning model is too simple to capture the underlying trend in the data, resulting in poor performance on both training and test data.

Unsupervised Learning: A type of machine learning where the model learns from unlabeled data to identify patterns, groupings, or structures in the data.

Unsupervised Learning: Machine learning where the model is trained on unlabeled data and must find hidden patterns or intrinsic structures in the input data.

Validation Set: A portion of the dataset used to evaluate the model’s performance during training to ensure it generalizes well to unseen data.

Validation Set: A subset of data used to tune the model's hyperparameters and evaluate its performance during training, separate from the training and test sets.

Variance: The extent to which a model’s predictions vary for different training data, often causing overfitting if too high.

Variational Autoencoder (VAE): A generative model that learns a probabilistic mapping of data to a latent space and can generate new data samples.

Word Embeddings: Dense vector representations of words that capture semantic meaning and relationships, such as Word2Vec or GloVe.

Word Embeddings: Dense vector representations of words that capture their semantic meaning and relationships, used in natural language processing.

Large Language Models (LLMs)

1. Attention Mechanism: A component of neural networks that dynamically weighs the importance of different parts of the input data, allowing the model to focus on relevant information.

2. Autoregressive Model: A type of model that generates each word of a sequence one at a time, using the previously generated words as context.

3. Backpropagation: A training algorithm for neural networks where gradients of the loss function are computed with respect to each weight by the chain rule, used to update the model parameters.

4. Bias: Systematic errors in a machine learning model that can lead to unfair outcomes, often reflecting prejudices present in the training data.

5. Context Window: The range of input tokens (words or subwords) that an LLM can consider at one time when generating a response.

6. Decoder: The part of a sequence-to-sequence model that generates output text from the encoded input text.

7. Encoder: The part of a sequence-to-sequence model that processes input text into a format that can be used by the decoder.

8. Embedding: A representation of text (words, sentences) as dense vectors in a high-dimensional space, capturing semantic meaning.

9. Fine-Tuning: The process of adjusting a pre-trained model on a specific task or dataset to improve performance on that task.

10. Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT): A type of LLM developed by OpenAI that uses the Transformer architecture and is pre-trained on a large corpus of text data.

11. Gradient Descent: An optimization algorithm used to minimize the loss function by iteratively adjusting the model parameters in the direction of the negative gradient.

12. Inference: The process of making predictions or generating outputs using a trained model.

13. Language Modeling: The task of predicting the next word or sequence of words in a text, based on the preceding context.

14. Loss Function: A mathematical function that measures the difference between the model’s predictions and the actual outcomes, guiding the training process.

15. Neural Network: A computational model composed of interconnected nodes (neurons) organized in layers, used to recognize patterns and make predictions.

16. Pre-training: The initial phase of training an LLM on a large, diverse dataset to learn general language patterns before fine-tuning on specific tasks.

17. Positional Encoding: A technique used in Transformer models to incorporate the order of words in a sequence, since the model itself is not inherently sequential.

18. Regularization: Techniques used during training to prevent overfitting by penalizing complex models, such as dropout or weight decay.

19. Reinforcement Learning: A type of machine learning where an agent learns to make decisions by receiving rewards or penalties based on its actions.

20. Self-Attention: A mechanism in the Transformer architecture where each word in a sentence considers every other word to compute a representation that captures relationships and dependencies.

21. Sequence-to-Sequence (Seq2Seq): A model architecture designed to map an input sequence to an output sequence, commonly used in tasks like translation.

22. Tokenization: The process of converting text into smaller units (tokens), such as words or subwords, which are used as input to the model.

23. Transformer: A neural network architecture introduced in the paper "Attention Is All You Need" that relies on self-attention mechanisms to process input sequences in parallel.

24. Transfer Learning: The technique of using a pre-trained model on a new, but related task, leveraging previously learned features and knowledge.

25. Zero-Shot Learning: The ability of an LLM to perform a task without having been explicitly trained on that specific task, relying on its general understanding of language.

AI & CyberSecurity

Access Control: Mechanisms and policies used to manage and restrict access to resources, with machine learning enhancing the detection of unauthorized access attempts.

Adaptive Security: Security systems that use machine learning to continuously adapt to evolving threats and changing network environments.

Anomaly Detection: A technique used to identify unusual patterns or behaviors in data that deviate from the norm, which may indicate potential security threats or intrusions.

Anomaly Score: A numerical value assigned to data points that quantifies how much they deviate from the expected norm, used to identify potential threats.

Application Security: The practice of safeguarding applications from security vulnerabilities and attacks, supported by machine learning to identify and mitigate risks.

AUC (Area Under the Curve): A metric that summarizes the overall performance of a model by measuring the area under the ROC curve.

Automated Threat Analysis: The use of machine learning to automatically analyze and categorize potential threats, reducing the need for manual intervention.

Behavioral Analytics: The use of machine learning to analyze and model user and system behavior, identifying deviations that could signify malicious activities or security breaches.

Classification: A supervised learning method used to categorize data into predefined classes or labels, such as distinguishing between normal and malicious network traffic.

Clustering: An unsupervised learning technique that groups similar data points together, useful for identifying patterns or anomalies in network traffic or user behavior without predefined labels.

Cross-Validation: A technique for assessing the performance of a machine learning model by dividing the data into multiple subsets, ensuring the model generalizes well to new data.

Cyber Threat Intelligence: Information and insights about potential or existing cyber threats, analyzed using machine learning to improve threat detection and response.

Data Augmentation: Techniques used to artificially increase the size of a dataset by creating variations of existing data, useful for training robust machine learning models.

Data Breach Detection: Techniques for identifying unauthorized access to or exfiltration of sensitive data, enhanced by machine learning to detect breaches in real-time.

Data Imputation: The process of filling in missing or incomplete data in a dataset, which is essential for maintaining the quality and accuracy of machine learning models.

Data Leakage Prevention: Techniques and tools to prevent the unauthorized sharing or exfiltration of sensitive data, often using machine learning to detect and block leaks.

Data Normalization: The process of scaling and transforming data to a standard range, improving the performance and convergence of machine learning models.

Detection Rate: The percentage of actual threats or anomalies correctly identified by a machine learning model, a key performance metric for security systems.

Dimensionality Reduction: Techniques like PCA used to reduce the number of features in a dataset while preserving important information, enhancing the efficiency of threat detection models.

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR): Security solutions that monitor and respond to threats on individual endpoints, often utilizing machine learning for advanced threat detection.

Endpoint Protection: Security measures and solutions focused on protecting individual devices from cyber threats, with machine learning enhancing detection and response capabilities.

Ensemble Learning: Combining multiple machine learning models to improve performance and robustness in detecting and responding to cyber threats.

Ensemble Methods: Techniques that combine multiple models to improve performance and reliability, often used in cybersecurity to enhance threat detection.

F1 Score: A metric that combines precision and recall into a single value, providing a balanced measure of a model’s performance in detecting threats.

False Alarm Rate: The rate at which legitimate actions or users are incorrectly flagged as threats, impacting the overall effectiveness of a security system.

False Negative: An incorrect result where an actual threat or anomaly is not detected by the model, potentially allowing malicious activities to go unnoticed.

False Positive: An incorrect result where a legitimate action or user is mistakenly classified as a threat or anomaly, leading to unnecessary alerts or actions.

Feature Engineering: The process of selecting, modifying, or creating features from raw data to improve the performance of machine learning models in cybersecurity tasks.

Feature Importance: A measure of how much each feature contributes to the model’s predictions, helping to identify key indicators of cybersecurity threats.

Feature Selection: The method of choosing the most relevant features from a dataset to enhance model performance and reduce complexity, important in identifying key indicators of cyber threats.

Fraud Detection: Machine learning techniques used to identify and prevent fraudulent activities by analyzing patterns and anomalies in transaction data.

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs): Machine learning models that use two neural networks to generate realistic data, sometimes used for creating simulated attacks or testing detection systems.

Hyperparameter Tuning: The process of optimizing the parameters that control the learning process of machine learning models to achieve better performance in cybersecurity tasks.

Incident Response: The process of addressing and managing security incidents, with machine learning aiding in detecting, analyzing, and responding to threats.

Insider Threat Detection: The use of machine learning to identify potential threats posed by individuals within an organization, such as employees or contractors.

Intrusion Detection System (IDS): A security system that uses machine learning to monitor network or system activities for signs of malicious behavior or policy violations.

Malware Detection: The use of machine learning algorithms to identify and classify malicious software based on its behavior, code characteristics, or other features.

Model Drift: The phenomenon where a machine learning model’s performance degrades over time due to changes in data patterns, requiring periodic updates or retraining.

Model Evaluation: The process of assessing the performance of a machine learning model using metrics such as accuracy, precision, and recall, crucial for ensuring effective cybersecurity solutions.

Network Anomaly Detection: The use of machine learning to identify deviations from normal network behavior, indicating potential security threats or unauthorized activities.

Network Forensics: The practice of analyzing network traffic and data to investigate and understand security incidents, using machine learning to enhance the analysis process.

Network Traffic Analysis: The process of monitoring and analyzing network data to detect anomalies, threats, or unauthorized access using machine learning techniques.

Phishing Detection: Machine learning methods used to identify fraudulent emails or websites designed to deceive users into divulging sensitive information.

Precision: The proportion of true positive detections among all positive detections made by the model, indicating the accuracy of the threat identification.

Recall: The proportion of true positive detections among all actual threats, measuring the model’s ability to identify all relevant threats.

Risk Assessment: The process of evaluating the potential risks and vulnerabilities in a system or network, often using machine learning to predict and mitigate potential threats.

ROC Curve: A graphical representation of a model’s performance, plotting the true positive rate against the false positive rate across different thresholds.

Security Analytics: The application of machine learning and data analysis techniques to security data to uncover insights, detect anomalies, and improve threat detection.

Security Automation: The use of machine learning and automation to streamline and accelerate security processes, improving efficiency and response times.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM): Systems that collect and analyze security-related data from across an organization, with machine learning enhancing the detection and response to security incidents.

Security Orchestration: The automated coordination and management of security tools and processes, enhanced by machine learning to improve response times and accuracy.

Security Posture Management: The continuous assessment and improvement of an organization’s security measures, supported by machine learning to enhance threat detection and response.

Sensitivity Analysis: The process of evaluating how changes in input features affect the output of a machine learning model, used to understand model behavior and robustness.

Supervised Learning: A machine learning approach where the model is trained on labeled data to learn patterns and make predictions or classifications based on new data.

Threat Detection Platform: A system that leverages machine learning to monitor and analyze security data for detecting.

Threat Hunting: The proactive search for hidden threats and vulnerabilities in a network or system using machine learning to identify indicators of compromise.

Threat Hunting: The proactive search for hidden threats in a network or system using machine learning techniques to analyze data and identify indicators of compromise.

Threat Intelligence: Data and insights about potential or existing cyber threats, which machine learning can analyze to predict, identify, and respond to security threats.

Threat Modeling: The process of identifying potential threats and vulnerabilities in a system, often enhanced by machine learning to predict and mitigate risks.

Training Data: Data used to train machine learning models, crucial for developing accurate models for detecting and responding to cyber threats.

True Negative: An accurate result where legitimate actions or users are correctly recognized as non-threatening by the model.

True Positive: An accurate result where a malicious action or threat is correctly identified and classified by the model.

Unsupervised Learning: A machine learning approach where the model learns patterns and structures in the data without predefined labels, useful for detecting unknown threats.

Zero Trust Architecture: A security model that assumes no inherent trust within a network and relies on machine learning to continuously verify and validate access requests.

Zero-Day Attack: A security vulnerability that is exploited before the developer or vendor is aware of it, often detected using advanced machine learning techniques.

SCADA

1. Alarm: A notification generated by a SCADA system to alert operators of abnormal conditions or system failures.

2. Analog Signal: A continuous signal that represents varying quantities such as temperature, pressure, or flow rate.

3. Architecture: The overall design and structure of a SCADA system, including hardware, software, and communication protocols.

4. Asset Management: The process of monitoring and managing the performance, maintenance, and operation of physical assets within a SCADA system.

5. Automation: The use of control systems and technologies to operate equipment with minimal or no human intervention.

6. Backup: A copy of data or system configurations stored separately to be used in case of system failure or data loss.

7. Communication Protocol: A set of rules and standards that enable devices and systems within a SCADA network to communicate with each other.

8. Control Room: A central location where operators monitor and control the processes and equipment within a SCADA system.

9. Data Acquisition: The process of collecting and measuring data from sensors, instruments, and devices within a SCADA system.

10. Database: An organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically, used in SCADA systems for logging and historical analysis.

11. Distributed Control System (DCS): A type of control system used in industrial processes, distinct from SCADA systems but often integrated with them for comprehensive control and monitoring.

12. Field Device: Equipment such as sensors, actuators, and controllers located in the field and connected to the SCADA system.

13. HMI (Human-Machine Interface): A graphical interface that allows operators to interact with the SCADA system, monitor processes, and issue commands.

14. Historian: A specialized database for collecting and storing historical data from SCADA systems, used for trend analysis and reporting.

15. I/O (Input/Output): The communication between the SCADA system and the field devices, where input refers to data received from the field and output refers to commands sent to the field.

16. Latency: The time delay between the initiation of a process and the observed effect, critical in real-time SCADA systems.

17. Modbus: A communication protocol widely used in SCADA systems for connecting industrial electronic devices.

18. Monitoring: The continuous observation of processes and equipment within a SCADA system to ensure proper operation and detect abnormalities.

19. Network Security: Measures and protocols implemented to protect the SCADA network from unauthorized access and cyber threats.

20. Node: A connection point within a SCADA network, typically representing devices like sensors, controllers, or computers.

21. OPC (OLE for Process Control): A series of standards and specifications for industrial communication, facilitating interoperability between different devices and systems within SCADA.

22. PLC (Programmable Logic Controller): A ruggedized computer used in industrial automation to control machinery and processes, often integrated with SCADA systems.

23. Protocol Converter: A device or software that translates data between different communication protocols, enabling interoperability in SCADA systems.

24. Real-Time Data: Information that is collected and processed instantly, allowing immediate monitoring and control within SCADA systems.

25. Redundancy: The inclusion of extra components or systems to provide backup in case of failure, ensuring continuous operation of SCADA systems.

26. Remote Terminal Unit (RTU): A device used in SCADA systems to connect sensors and actuators to the central control system, typically via wireless or wired communication.

27. SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition): A system used for monitoring and controlling industrial processes, collecting data from sensors and equipment, and providing centralized control and visualization.

28. Sensor: A device that detects and measures physical properties, such as temperature, pressure, or flow, and sends this data to the SCADA system.

29. Setpoint: A predefined value that the SCADA system uses as a target for controlling processes, such as the desired temperature or pressure.

30. Slave Device: In a master-slave communication model, the device that responds to requests from the master, typically used in field devices within SCADA systems.

31. Synchronous: Operations or data transfers that occur at regular intervals, coordinated by a clock signal within the SCADA system.

32. Telemetry: The process of transmitting data from remote sensors and devices to the SCADA system for monitoring and control.

33. Trend Analysis: The examination of historical data collected by the SCADA system to identify patterns, trends, and anomalies over time.

34. Visualization: The graphical representation of data and processes within a SCADA system, enabling operators to understand and control operations effectively.

35. VPN (Virtual Private Network): A secure communication network that uses encryption and other security measures to protect data transmitted between remote SCADA components and the central system.

36. Watchdog Timer: A hardware or software timer that automatically takes corrective action if the SCADA system fails to operate as expected within a specified time frame.

37. Wireless Communication: The use of wireless technologies (e.g., radio, Wi-Fi) to connect field devices and components within a SCADA system, enabling remote monitoring and control.

38. XML (eXtensible Markup Language): A flexible text format used for data exchange between different systems and applications within SCADA systems, enabling interoperability and integration.