Cyber Insurance & Security Glossary

Insurance company not licensed to do business within a given state.

Insurers in which a parent company has: 1) a financial interest represented by the direct or indirect ownership of less than 50% of voting shares, and 2) does not have the ability to exercise control over the insurer, e.g., through voting stock or management contract.

A Non-Printable Character is a character that doesn’t have a corresponding character letter to its corresponding ASCII code. Examples would be the Linefeed, which is ASCII character code 10 decimal, the Carriage Return, which is 13 decimal, or the bell sound, which is decimal 7. On a PC, you can often add non-printable characters by holding down the Alt key, and typing in the decimal value (i.e., Alt-007 gets you a bell). There are other character encoding schemes, but ASCII is the most prevalent

Non-Repudiation refers to the ability of a system to prove that a specific user and only that specific user sent a message and that it hasn’t been modified. On the Internet, a digital signature is used not only to ensure that a message or document has been electronically signed by the person, but also, since a digital signature can only be created by one person, to ensure that a person cannot later deny that they furnished the signature.

The principal value upon which future payments are based in a derivative transaction as at a specific period in time (the "as of" reporting date) in the reporting currency.

A Null session is also known as Anonymous Logon. It is a method that allows an anonymous user to retrieve information such as user names and share this over the network, or connect without authentication. Null sessions are one of the most commonly used methods for network exploration employed by “hackers.” A null session connection allows you to connect to a remote machine without using a user name or password. Instead, you are given anonymous or guest access.

An octet is a unit of digital information that consists of eight bits. Octets are generally displayed using a variety of representations, for example in the hexadecimal, decimal, or octal number systems. The binary value of all 8 bits set (or turned on) is 11111111, equal to the hexadecimal value FF, the decimal value 255, and the octal value 377. One octet can be used to represent decimal values ranging from 0 to 255.

One-way encryption or one-way hash function is designed in a manner that it is hard to reverse the process, that is, to find a string that hashes to a given value (hence the name one-way). A good hash function makes it hard to find two strings that would produce the same hash value.

A one-way function is any function that is easy to compute on every input, but hard to invert given the image of a random input.

An Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) is a routing protocol for IP networks and uses a link-state routing algorithm. It falls into the group of interior routing protocols, operating within a single autonomous system (AS). OSPF is the most commonly used interior gateway protocol (IGP) in large enterprise networks

An agreement giving the buyer the right to buy or receive, sell or deliver, enter into, extend or terminate, or effect a cash settlement based on the actual or expected price, level, performance or value of one or more Underlying Interests.

OSI stands for Open System Interconnection and is an ISO standard for worldwide communications. OSI defines a networking framework for implementing protocols in seven layers. OSI defines seven layers of functions that take place at each end of a communication. Although OSI is not always strictly adhered to in terms of keeping related functions together in a well-defined layer, many products involved in telecommunication attempt to describe themselves in relation to the OSI model

The Open System Interconnection (OSI) model defines a networking framework to implement protocols in seven layers. Control is passed from one layer to the next, starting at the application layer in one station, and proceeding to the bottom layer, over the channel to the next station and back up the hierarchy. The OSI model takes the task of internetworking and divides that up into what is referred to as a vertical stack that consists of the following layers.

An Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) is a routing protocol for IP networks and uses a link-state routing algorithm. It falls into the group of interior routing protocols, operating within a single autonomous system (AS). OSPF is the most commonly used interior gateway protocol (IGP) in large enterprise networks

Allocable expenses other than loss adjustment expenses and investment expenses.

Overload is defined as the limitation of system operation by excessive burden on the performance capabilities of a system component.

Two or more distinct policies combined into a single contract.

A packet is a term that is used to describe a segment of data sent from one computer or device to another over a network.

A packet switched network (PSN) is a computer communications network that groups and sends data in the form of small packets. It enables sending of data packets between a source and destination node over a channel that is shared between multiple users and/or applications. A packet switched is also known as a connectionless network, as it does not create a permanent connection between a source and destination node

Password Authentication Protocol (PAP) is the most basic form of authentication in which a user’s name and password are transmitted over a network and compared to a table of name-password pairs. The basic authentication feature built into the HTTP protocol uses PAP.

The nominal or face value of a stock or bond.

Parasitic viruses, also known as file viruses, spread by attaching themselves to programs.

Partitioning is the division of a computer hard disk or other secondary storage into one or more regions. Many computers have hard disk drives with only a single partition but others have multiple partitions so that an OS can manage information in each region separately. Each partition then appears in the OS as a distinct logical disk that uses part of the actual disk.

A passive attack is a network attack in which a system is monitored and sometimes scanned for open ports and vulnerabilities. The purpose is solely to gain information about the target and no data is changed on the target.

Password Authentication Protocol (PAP) is the most basic form of authentication in which a user’s name and password are transmitted over a network and compared to a table of name-password pairs. The basic authentication feature built into the HTTP protocol uses PAP.

Password cracking is the process of trying to guess or crack passwords to gain access to a computer system or network. Crackers generally use a variety of tools, scripts, or software to crack a system password. Password cracks work by comparing every encrypted dictionary word against the entries in system password file until a match is found.

Password sniffing is a technique used to gain knowledge of passwords that involves monitoring traffic on a network to pull out information. There are several softwares available for automatic password sniffing.

A patch is a set of changes to software or its supporting data designed to update, fix, or improve it.

Patching is the process of updating software to a different version. It is also referred as updating the software to the latest version available and is key in removing bugs of the previous version.

The payload is the part of transmitted data that contains the intended message.

Penetration is defined as gaining unauthorised logical access to sensitive data by evading a system’s protections.

A security assessment method to test, measure, and enhance established security measures on information systems.

A security assessment method to test, measure, and enhance established security measures on information systems.

The cause of property damage or personal injury, origin of desire for insurance. "Cause of Loss".

Permutation is a technique that keeps the same letters but changes the position within a text to scramble the message.

Personal firewalls are those firewalls that are installed and run on individual computers. A personal firewall is an application which controls network traffic to and from a computer, permitting or denying communications based on a security policy. Typically it works as an application layer firewall

Credit insurance that insures the excess of the outstanding indebtedness over the primary property insurance benefits in the event of a total loss to a collateral asset.

Single interest or dual interest credit insurance (where collateral is not a motor vehicle, mobile home, or real estate) that covers perils to goods purchased or used as collateral and that concerns a creditor's interest in the purchased goods or pledged collateral either in whole or in part; or covers perils to goods purchased in connection with an open-end credit transaction.

Pharming is defined as a cyber attack that is intended to redirect a website’s traffic to a masquerading website, which may be a fake one. Pharming is achieved by corrupting a DNS server on the Internet and steering a URL to the masked website’s IP. Generally all users use a URL like www.worldbank.com instead of the real IP (192.86.99.140) of the website. The URL can be redirected to send traffic to the IP of the pseudo website by substituting the pointers on a DNS server. The transactions can be imitated and information like login credentials can be gathered at the pseudo site. Using the information gathered, the attacker can access the real site and conduct transactions using the credentials of a valid user.

Phishing is a method of trying to gather sensitive information using deceptive emails and websites.

Phishing refers to the process of deceiving recipients into sharing sensitive information with an unknown third party (cyber criminal).

A ping of death is an attack that involves sending a distorted or otherwise malicious ping to a computer with the intent of overflowing the input buffers of the destination machine and causing it to crash. A ping of death is fragmented into groups of 8 octets before transmission.

A ping sweep is also known as an ICMP sweep is a basic network scanning technique used to determine which of a range of IP addresses map to live network hosts.

A ping scan looks for machines that are responding to ICMP Echo Requests.

In cryptography, plaintext or cleartext is unencrypted information.

Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) is a communication protocol between two computers that uses a serial interface, typically a personal computer connected by a phone line to a server. PPP uses the Internet protocol (IP) and is sometimes considered a member of the TCP/IP suite of protocols.

The Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) is an approach used to implement virtual private networks (VPN). PPTP uses a control channel over TCP and a GRE tunnel operating to encapsulate PPP packets.

Poison reverse is a method where the gateway node communicates its neighbour gateways that one of the gateways is no longer connected. The notifying gateway sets the number of hops to the unconnected gateway to a number that indicates “infinite”. In effect, advertising the fact that there routes are not reachable

A written contract ratifying the legality of an insurance agreement.

A refund of part of the premium on a participating life insurance policy. Amount of payment is determined by subtracting the actual premium expense from the premium charged. The payment can be taken as cash, applied to a purchase an increment of paid-up insurance, left on deposit with the insurance company or applied to purchase term insurance for one year.

Time period during which insurance coverage is in effect.

The amount of money allocated specifically for the fulfillment of policy obligations by a life insurance company; reserves are in place to safeguard that the company is able to pay all future claims.

Assets in excess of the liabilities of a company or net income above any monies indebted to legal obligation.

Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) is a communication protocol between two computers that uses a serial interface, typically a personal computer connected by a phone line to a server. PPP uses the Internet protocol (IP) and is sometimes considered a member of the TCP/IP suite of protocols.

The Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) is an approach used to implement virtual private networks (VPN). PPTP uses a control channel over TCP and a GRE tunnel operating to encapsulate PPP packets.

A packet switched network (PSN) is a computer communications network that groups and sends data in the form of small packets. It enables sending of data packets between a source and destination node over a channel that is shared between multiple users and/or applications. A packet switched is also known as a connectionless network, as it does not create a permanent connection between a source and destination node