A taxonomy is a classification scheme that partitions a body of knowledge and defines the relationship of the objects
A good taxonomy is useful to:
- help educate professionals to a better and faster understanding of the context
- have a backbone on which to base further studies
A good taxonomy is:
- based on approved content (peer-reviewed papers)
- understandable: from both experts and people who are not in the field
- exhaustive
- deterministic
- mutually exclusive: each element must be classified in one category only
- reproducible
- having well-defined terms/clear criteria
- conforms to standards
- unambiguous
- useful
Different (valid) taxonomies are possible
Different taxonomies can be constructed depending on the criteria according to which a phenomenon is included or excluded from a category. For example, vulnerabilities may be classified according to:
- prevalence
- similar causes
- similar consequences (severity)