Persistence in a cybersecurity setting refers to the techniques and strategies used by a threat actor to maintain long-term, stealthy, and unauthorized access to a compromised system or network, even after disruptions like system restarts, patched vulnerabilities, or changed user credentials.
It’s a critical phase in a cyberattack, allowing the adversary to keep a “foothold” for an extended period to achieve their ultimate objectives, such as data exfiltration or system destruction, without having to re-exploit the system for initial access.