The professionals who work to uncover security vulnerabilities in hardware must find a common language for categorizing them. That is the entire purpose of a taxonomy. Cyber Scoop brought us this interesting topic in their article, “Intel pushes for hardware-specific additions to vulnerability taxonomy.”

Because hardware researchers do not have the same standard taxonomy of terms that would enable them to share information and techniques with one another, there are areas of weakness in the hardware. Hardware vulnerabilities are issues with firmware or code embedded on a device.

This leaves the system open to a hacker who could, for example, create very different effects with physical access to a hardware security module, which performs key cryptographic operations, compared to a run-of-the-mill Internet of Things (IoT) device.

Taxonomies add value to the content. At its most basic form, a taxonomy is nothing more than a filing system, a comprehensive filing system. For these types of projects, professionals should look for an experienced builder of solid standards-based taxonomies to associate content for appropriate machine-assisted indexing. Access Innovations can provide solutions that are ANSI-compliant.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.