Glossary
Plain definitions of the terms used across this site, each one linked to the page that explains it in full.
Fourteen terms, defined the way we use them. Where a term is contested in the market, the definition says what it excludes as well as what it includes.
OPSI
A four-part, evidence-led go-to-market method: Opportunity, Proof, Strategy, Implement. It begins by naming the audience with the greatest value to the outcome, then gathers evidence on what that audience believes, builds the plan and owners, and ships work that is measured against the intended outcome.
Category creation
The work of establishing a new market term that buyers, analysts, and competitors adopt to describe a problem. It succeeds when other people use your name for the problem without being paid to, and fails when the term describes your product instead of the buyer's situation.
Positioning
The decision about which audience a company is for, what it is the obvious choice for, and what alternative it is being compared against. In security it is constrained by verifiability: a position that cannot survive a technical evaluation is not a position.
Fractional CMO
A senior marketing leader engaged part-time with real accountability for strategy and outcomes, as distinct from an agency retainer that delivers activity. Typically used by companies that need executive judgment before they can justify a full-time hire.
Product marketing
The translation layer between what a product does and what a buyer understands: messaging, positioning per product, launch sequencing, competitive intelligence, and the material used in a technical evaluation.
Demand generation
The system that creates and captures buying intent. In security it is account-first rather than lead-first, because purchases are committee decisions with long, non-linear evaluations that a lead-scoring model cannot represent.
Sales enablement
Equipping sellers and internal champions with material that survives the buyer's internal process without a seller present — a forwardable deck, an internal business case, and pre-written answers to diligence questions.
Analyst relations
The practice of briefing industry analysts so that their published research describes your market accurately. It is a category instrument as much as a credibility one, because analysts choose the vocabulary buyers inherit.
Partner marketing
Making a company's story portable enough that a partner with no stake in it can carry it accurately, and choosing partners by trusted access to a chosen audience.
Change marketing
Applying marketing discipline to an internal audience in order to change behavior: naming the group whose actions determine the outcome, earning visible sponsorship, and correcting the reward system that contradicts the ask.
Operational resilience
An organization's ability to continue delivering critical services through disruption. As a market term it spans business continuity, third-party risk, crisis management, and increasingly the resilience of AI-dependent processes.
AI governance
The set of decisions, controls, and accountabilities that determine how AI systems are approved, monitored, and constrained inside an organization. It became a buying category when AI moved from recommendation into execution.
Microsimulation
A short, scenario-based exercise that tests how people respond to a disruption, run in minutes where a traditional tabletop takes days. Named and marketed as a category term in resilience technology.
Board reporting
The practice of translating a security or risk program into terms a board can act on: exposure in business language, what changed, what it cost, and what decision is being asked for.