Cybersecurity Glossary
Honeypot
A deliberately attractive fake asset placed to detect intruders.
What Honeypot means
A honeypot is a decoy: a file named as though it held payroll data, an unused account with an appealing name, a fake server. Nobody legitimate has any reason to touch it, so any interaction is a high confidence signal that something is wrong.
Why Honeypot matters for small businesses and nonprofits
For small organisations this is a rare case of high value detection at almost no cost. A handful of decoy files and accounts produce very few false alarms compared with most monitoring.
What to do about Honeypot
- Place a few decoy files in file shares and alert on any access
- Create a decoy administrative account that is never used legitimately
- Make sure the alert reaches someone who will act on it
Not sure where you stand on this?
We review your current setup against the basics, tell you plainly what is covered and what is not, and give you a ranked list with effort and cost. No jargon and no scare tactics.