Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a set of AI techniques that let computers read, classify, and extract meaning from human language. In cyber security and data protection, NLP is used on emails, chat logs, incident reports, code comments, and medical notes to find entities, detect intent, and automate filtering or redaction. It is especially useful when data is unstructured text that would be too large or inconsistent for manual review.
NLP matters because language can expose secrets even when obvious identifiers are removed. In clinical-data projects, for example, NLP may help transform free-text notes into searchable research data, but the same text can still contain names, locations, dates, or rare conditions that raise re-identification risk. Defenders use NLP for phishing detection, content moderation, and privacy screening; attackers use it to generate convincing spear-phishing messages or to mine public text for sensitive details. The security challenge is not just reading text, but doing so with strong access control, review, and privacy safeguards.