Relationship

A security relationship is a decision-relevant link between entities—asset, identity, application, exposure, or path—that changes how observations should be interpreted, prioritized, or investigated.

Relationship

Definition

In security decision support, a relationship is a decision-relevant link between entities—assets, identities, applications, exposures, attack paths, or other security objects—that changes how observations should be interpreted, prioritized, or investigated.

Relationships answer questions such as: What can be reached from here? Who can access this? Which exposures compound? Which path includes this node? They supply context through structure, not merely records in a graph database or network diagram.

This term describes semantic linkage for judgment. It is not a graph database product concept, topology discovery output, or visualization layer by itself.

Relationship types (decision lens)

Type Decision question
Asset-to-asset What can be reached from this resource?
Identity-to-asset Who can touch the exposed or affected resource?
Application-to-service What capability depends on this condition?
Exposure-to-path Which attack paths include this weakness?
Entity-to-intelligence Does external knowledge apply to this entity now?

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