Timekeeping is the act of measuring and displaying elapsed time. In computing, it usually means keeping a clock, counting durations, and marking events with accurate timestamps. Good timekeeping matters in cyber security because many security controls depend on time being correct: log correlation, certificate validation, token expiry, scheduled jobs, and incident timelines all rely on it.
Attackers can abuse weak timekeeping by changing system clocks, delaying messages, or exploiting poor synchronization to confuse audits and break trust checks. Defenders use network time protocols, monotonic timers, and trusted logging to make records consistent and tamper-resistant. In hardware and embedded systems, timekeeping also supports authentication, rate limiting, and detection of unusual delays, where even small timing differences can reveal a vulnerability.