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accountability

nounverified·updated May 9, 2026

The security goal that generates the requirement for actions of an entity to be traced uniquely to that entity. This supports non-repudiation, deterrence, fault isolation, intrusion detection and prevention, and after-action recovery and legal action.

NISTIR 7298: Glossary of Key Information Security Terms, Revision 2

Senses

ISACA Cybersecurity Glossary

The ability to map a given activity or event back to the responsible party

FFIEC Cybersecurity Assessment Tool, Baseline, May 2017

The fact or condition of being required or expected to justify actions or decisions; responsibility.

NISTIR 7298: Glossary of Key Information Security Terms, Revision 2sense 2 pending review

Principle that an individual is entrusted to safeguard and control equipment, keying material, and information and is answerable to proper authority for the loss or misuse of that equipment or information.

ISO/IEC TS 5723:2022(en) Trustworthiness — Vocabulary

1) relates to an allocated responsibility. The responsibility can be based on regulation or agreement or through assignment as part of delegation; 2) For systems, a property that ensures that actions of an entity can be traced uniquely to the entity; 3) In a governance context, the obligation of an individual or organization to account for its activities, for completion of a deliverable or task, accept the responsibility for those activities, deliverables or tasks, and to disclose the results in a transparent manner.

ISO/IEC TS 5723:2022(en) Trustworthiness — Vocabularysense 2 pending review

"accountable" (adjective vs. noun): answerable for actions, decisions, and performance

Wordset Dictionary

responsibility to someone or for some activity

Classifications

Entity Type

Requirement85%llm-generatedllm:claude-haiku-4-5
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Sensitivity

90%llm-generatedllm:claude-haiku-4-5
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Information Class

95%llm-generatedllm:claude-haiku-4-5
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Variants

synonym
answerabilityanswerableness
alternatephrasing
Accountability
plural
accountabilities
possessive
accountability's
pluralpossessive
accountabilities'