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Security Operations · Foundational

Asset Criticality

A rating of how important an asset is to the business, used to prioritize protection and response.

Definition

Criticality reflects data sensitivity, operational importance, regulatory scope and dependencies. Vulnerability management, SIEM urgency and incident severity all use criticality to weigh findings. It depends on an accurate asset inventory, often maintained in a CMDB.

Example

Classifying the payment processing database as critical and the cafeteria menu server as low.

Exam tip

The same vulnerability has higher priority on a critical asset.

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