CyberGlossary

Compliance & Frameworks

MITRE ATT&CK

Also known as: ATT&CK, MITRE ATT&CK Framework

Definition

A globally accessible knowledge base of adversary tactics and techniques observed in real-world attacks, maintained by MITRE.

MITRE ATT&CK (Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Common Knowledge) is a curated, regularly updated knowledge base that describes how attackers operate against enterprises, mobile devices, and industrial control systems. It organises behaviour into tactics (the attacker's goals, such as Initial Access or Exfiltration) and techniques and sub-techniques (the methods used), and links them to threat groups, software, and mitigations. Although not a compliance framework, ATT&CK has become a de facto industry reference for threat-informed defence, used for SOC detection engineering, red and purple teaming, threat-intelligence sharing, and gap assessments against frameworks like NIST CSF.

Examples

  • A SOC mapping its detection rules to ATT&CK techniques to identify coverage gaps.
  • A threat-intel team tagging APT reports with ATT&CK technique IDs.

Related terms