Cybersecurity and GRC terminology: English to Mexican Spanish
Use this guide when translating cybersecurity, privacy, audit, and GRC content for professionals in Mexico. It describes professional usage, not word-for-word equivalence.
Edition 2026.3. The companion guide, Spanish to English, lives on the Spanish version of this page. If something here is not how you would say it, tell us.
Legal note: Legal terms are date-sensitive, and this guide is not legal advice. Verify the current official instrument, authority, and procedure before relying on a legal translation.
How to use this guide
The default register is formal Mexican professional writing: security policies, audit reports, regulatory material, technical documentation, and professional training. Team chat, job titles, product names, commands, and quoted interface text may retain more English.
- Translate: Mexican professional writing normally uses the Spanish term.
- Keep in English: The English borrowing is the normal specialist term in Mexico.
- Context-dependent: The correct form changes with technical sense, register, organization, or jurisdiction.
- Official name or acronym: Preserve the official name, designation, or working acronym.
- Legal term, date-sensitive: Use the wording of the governing instrument and verify the current official text.
Consistency applies to the same sense, register, jurisdiction, and grammatical use. It does not require different concepts to share one translation.
Terms
firewall
→firewallKeep in EnglishPractitioner and enterprise security writing
Mexican practitioners normally retain firewall. Cortafuegos is valid and appears in formal and educational material, often as an explanatory equivalent. In Spanish, use el firewall and plural firewalls.
Evidence basis: Professional usage judgment; no legal force is claimed.
That is not how I would say it
log; logs
→log; logs; registro; bitácoraContext-dependentOperations, audit, and legal records
Keep the noun in English, masculine, with the English plural: el log, los logs. In compounds the noun stays English and the modifier follows in Spanish: log de auditoría, log de eventos, log del sistema, log de acceso, log de autenticación, log del firewall, archivo de log, entrada de log, modo solo log. As the object of a process: gestión de logs, retención de logs, reenvío de logs, correlación de logs, análisis de logs. The verb is registrar (never loguear), and logging as a practice is registro. Product names stay as written (VPC Flow Logs), and where a law names its own record, quote it as written, such as bitácora de vulneraciones. Also correct and widely understood: registro and bitácora (registro de auditoría, bitácora de acceso). Prefer log, and use one term for the same thing throughout a text.
Example: The system records every administrative event in the audit log. → El sistema registra cada evento administrativo en el log de auditoría.
Sources: Current LGPDPPSO, Chamber of Deputies · Official DOF security provisions for financial-technology institutions