---
title: Terminology
slug: terminology
icon: 📖
docTags: 
createdAt: 2024-04-18T14:40:21.674Z
---

## **Release Stages**

**Private Preview**

Private Preview features are early-stage capabilities made available to a limited group of design-partner customers ahead of general release. These features are functional but may have known limitations, evolving interfaces, or reduced support coverage compared to fully released features. Customers participating in Private Preview provide feedback, may encounter occasional rough edges, and work directly with Truffle to validate the feature in real-world conditions. Documentation and support resources may be limited during this stage.

**General Availability (GA)**

A feature reaches General Availability once it has met Truffle's enterprise quality bar for functionality, stability, performance, security, and supportability. GA features are available to all customers, fully documented, covered by standard support, and included in published release notes. GA features are enabled on Truffle's regular monthly release day, giving customers predictable timing and advance notice to support change-control requirements.

## Configuration

**Sources**: Integrations that provide data to be scanned. They are configured via a local configuration file, or in the web UI. Examples of sources include: Slack, JIRA, Github, S3, etc. See the [Scan for secrets](docId:91JgobvG-nkxpHML0ko7k) part of the documentation for more information.

**Notifiers**: Integrations for sending notifications for found secrets. Examples of notifiers include: Email, Slack message, JIRA ticket, or a webhook. See the [Notify results](docId:3x2GI1gjNcQbCagjfqsSW) part of the documentation for more information.

**Scanners (agents):** The component that scan for secrets and verify them. Metadata of the secret is sent to the configured notifiers and to your hosted web UI. See the rest of the [Getting started](docId\:thkH-gLbMuRKDWud7wbmh) documentation for creating and configuring a scanner.

**Scanner Group (agent group)**: Used to manage multiple scanners. You configure scanner groups in the web UI. A scanner group can run more than one scanner instance, and scan jobs will run across those instances.

**Detectors:** The individual *rules* and *signature types* that TruffleHog uses to find secrets, credentials, and other sensitive data across source code, logs, configs, containers, cloud resources, and more. Each detector focuses on a particular kind of secret. To customize detection see the [Custom Detector](https://docs.trufflesecurity.com/custom-detectors) documentation.

## Scanners

**Hosted scanner**

A scanner that runs in Truffle Security's infrastructure, in an isolated environment dedicated to your tenant. Truffle Security manages the compute, updates, and availability with no setup or maintenance on your end. Every tenant has a default *hosted scanner group*. Best for getting started quickly.

**Self-hosted scanner**

A scanner that runs on hardware you operate (Kubernetes, VM, or container host in your own network). You manage the compute. Self-hosted scanners live in their own *scanner group*, created in the web UI. Best for sources that aren't reachable from the public internet, or when data residency or network isolation requires scanning inside your environment.

## **Secrets**

Secrets, or more generally credentials, are the data that is scanned for. Examples of secrets include: access keys/tokens, API keys, passwords, etc.

### **Secret states**

**Live**: The secret is verified and is active.

**Not Live: **This secret was tested and was never verified as active.

**Rotated/Deactivated**: The secret was verified as live at one point, and has since been verified as not live.

**All**: Any secret that was found.

## **Triage states**

Triage states can be used to label where a finding sits in your review process. Common usage:

*Open states: findings still requiring action or investigation.*

- **Not Triaged**: The finding is new and has not been reviewed. No determination has been made about validity, risk, or ownership.
- **In Review**: A finding being investigated to determine validity, ownership, scope of exposure, or appropriate response.
- **Notified**: The responsible party (secret owner or owning team) has been informed of the finding. Awaiting acknowledgement or action.
- **In Progress**: Remediation work has begun, such as rotating, revoking, or removing the secret from the exposed location.

*Closed states: findings that no longer require active work.*

- **Resolved**: The secret has been remediated by being rotated, revoked, removed, or verified as no longer active.
- **Invalid**: A false positive. The detected value is not a functional secret or was incorrectly identified by the detector.
- **Exception**: The secret represents a known, accepted risk, often after a security review determined the exposure is tolerable given compensating controls, limited scope of impact, or business justification. We recommend tracking an owner and review date alongside exceptions.
- **Will Not Fix**: The finding is intentionally and permanently dismissed with no expectation of future review, such as canary tokens, honeypots, or other intentional placements.