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Glossary

This article contains a glossary of mostly Brinqa specific terminology to help you understand the terms and objects you might come across in your Brinqa Platform and reading the documentation.

Asset​

An abstract entity in the Brinqa Platform to store information about servers, containers, cloud resources, services, or applications. This is the entity that findings are associated with.

Automation​

A flexible workflow engine in Brinqa that provides capability to build complex and automated actions on any dataset derived from a BQL query.

Base risk score​

The initial score assigned to a finding, typically derived from standardized scoring systems such as Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) v3 or CVSS v2. This score reflects the inherent risk of a finding without considering any additional risk factors or context.

Brinqa agent​

A secure, high-performance gateway downloaded and installed by a Brinqa customer onto their server to transfer data from the customer’s on-premises sources to the Brinqa Platform. Download the latest version on https://connectors.brinqa.io/#/downloads.

Brinqa connect​

A tool for customers to send unstructured data to the Brinqa Platform. The API provides ingress/egress capabilities, along with encryption at rest to protect the data. Download the latest version on https://connectors.brinqa.io/#/downloads.

Brinqa Condition Language (BCL)​

A language specifically used when creating or modifying Risk Factors, Service-Level Agreements (SLA), and clusters. The Condition in BCL is what typically comes after a WHERE clause of a BQL query and is used to specify what data to retrieve.

Brinqa Query Language (BQL)​

Brinqa Query Language utilizes an entity-relationship graph design that is simple to read and compose. You can send requests using BQL to process data stored within Brinqa Risk Graph and retrieve results based on that data.

Clusters​

Clusters are a way of grouping and organizing your data based on specific characteristics.

Connector​

A stand-alone component that connects to a data source and retrieves data. See the current list on https://connectors.brinqa.io/.

Connector store​

A page within the Brinqa Platform where customers can install and update the connector for a particular data source.

Data computation​

A process to perform actions on data models. For example, execute scripts, launch syncs, or send email notifications.

Data consolidation​

A process to combine data from multiple sources based on the same unique identifier, such as the Common Vulnerability and Exposure (CVE) identification number. The homogenization of data makes it comparable, reportable, and actionable.

Data integration​

A process of importing your data through a streamlined and automated method.

Data models​

Also known as unified data models (UDM), they are the most central elements in the Brinqa Platform, structuring and determining relationships between all data and objects in the system. Data models define schema for data sets, automate data inputs, and normalize data from different sources.

Data orchestration​

A sequence of flows that performs data integration, consolidation, and computation to get your data ready for searching and reporting in the Brinqa Platform.

Data server​

A record that customers create in their Brinqa Platform to denote a server associated with their on-premises resources.

Finding​

An abstract entity in the Brinqa Platform to represent a security finding, which may be a vulnerability, a policy violation, an alert, or a code issue.

Flow​

A series of steps with defined paths. Each step contains an action and a transition. Once an action has been executed, the system determines which step is next based on the execution result and the defined transition. The flow context, which contains the results of the execution of each step, is saved into a persistence layer for robust recovery and high availability.

Risk factor​

A data model for users to increase or decrease risk scores without knowledge of calculated attributes or scripting. With Risk factors, you can track individual factors of a risk score for improved visibility, audit for significant deviations in risk scores, or answer questions like "Why is my asset marked as Critical?"

Risk rating​

A qualitative representation of the risk score, usually expressed as a category like Low, Medium, High, or Critical. Risk ratings provide a more accessible and easily understandable view of the risk associated with a finding, making it easier to prioritize remediation efforts.

Risk score​

A calculated score, ranging from 1 to 10, that takes the base risk score and adjusts it by considering additional risk factors specific to your organization or environment, such as asset criticality, business impact, and threat intelligence. This score provides a more accurate assessment of the actual risk posed by a vulnerability in your specific context.

SLA definition​

A special type of data model that you can apply to other data models, enabling you to implement SLA compliance and set due dates for remediation tickets in a standardized manner.

Source data models (SDM)​

Source data models are generated by connectors in the data integration process to normalize data from different data sources, so that they can be mapped to Brinqa's unified data models.

Unified data models (UDM)​

See data models.

View​

A view defines the metadata to visualize data. Views are associated with data models. Brinqa includes several data models out of the box with preconfigured views: list, form, show, lookup, and compact.