Cybersecurity Bingo

Austin, Texas

Cybersecurity Bingo

Meetings, especially in the cybersecurity realm, can sometimes feel like a stroll through a jargon jungle. There's a lot of "phishing" but not the kind that requires a fishing rod. There's talk of "firewalls," but nobody's trying to keep warm. To make our ventures through this linguistic labyrinth a tad more enjoyable, I've created a Cybersecurity Bingo Card. Loaded with popular terminologies—from the straightforward "DNS" to the all-too-relatable "Sorry, was on mute"—this card will help you decode the tech talk and bring a competitive edge to your meetings. Remember to play fair: no "proxy" players allowed, and don't just mark "threat" because someone side-eyed you for stealing the last donut. Dive in, have fun, and may the best jargon-juggler win!

Happy playing, and remember, it's all in good fun!

Square Definitions:

Phishing	Spear phishing or regular works
Switch/Router	Switch or router-type infrastructure. Hub would also be a valid entry
Firewall	A vendor brand such as Palo-Alto, or Cisco works as long as it is within the context of a firewall
Escalate	The exact word needs to be used
Pen-test	Pen-testing or red-team can be considered valid entries
D/DoS	"Distributed denial of service" or just "denial of service" are valid
Tiger-team	Can be used singular or plural
Malware	Malware, Ransomware, or the type of actual name of the malware are valid to complete this square
Bandwidth	As it refers to network traffic, or available time to work on something (not the circumference of musicians)
Actor	Used in the form of a threat actor, not the actor seen in a movie or TV show
Nation-state	Must be both words used (Nation-state) to complete the square. Using 'nation' on its own and then later using 'state' doesn't count
Al/Machine Learning	Any variants of Artificial intelligence or machine learning are valid entries; this also includes terms such as supervised or unsupervised neural networks
Free Space	It doesn't need to be said, but if someone says it, then you know that you're on a roll with this group!
Intel	It is intended in the context of threat intelligence, not the computer chip maker. However, you could still complete the square and argue the process
Policy	Policy, as it relates to business or rule policy, is fine. You may want to agree beforehand if anything from governance is allowed to complete this square, such as NIST, ISO, etc.
Blocked	Blocking is also a valid entry and may be used with a high-scoring sentence such as 'I have blocked the threat actor'
Proxy	The idea of proxying network connections, not having someone fill out your bingo card by proxy
Network	As it relates to communication on the organization's TCP/IP network, whether intranet or internet-based. If used in the context of neural network then you should complete the Al/Machine Learning square
Rule	Typically related to a threat signature or firewall that governs how future occurrences are remediated
Recon	Recon or Reconnaissance is good to complete this square.
Ticket	Ideally related to a bug tracking system, trouble ticketing system, or service ticketing system. If someone proclaims, 'that's the ticket!' then you probably deserve to complete the square just for being in the same room as that person
Threat	Ideally, it relates to network or software threats within the organization. It could also be used in the context of an insider threat, which hopefully isn't anyone in the room with you right now
DNS	It is a pretty straightforward reference to the internet domain name servers, and is likely used as part of a sentence, such as 'I did a DNS lookup on the domain.it was '
Logs	Not of the tree kind, but of the kind typically aggregated from Windows, Linux, Active-Directory, Firewalls, or other such sources. The term 'Syslog' would be acceptable to complete this square
Sorry, I was on mute	You'll likely hear something like this on any internet-based communication software, such as Zoom, Webex, GoToMeeting, etc. Hopefully, never followed by the phrase, "I'm not a cat."

Pete Slade

March 1, 2022

Cybersecurity & ThreatsMiscellaneous

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