A temporary fix is a short-term mitigation used to reduce impact when a full repair is not yet available. It may be a workaround, configuration change, policy adjustment, feature disablement, or vendor-provided patch that only addresses the immediate symptom.
In cyber security, temporary fixes matter because defenders often need to stop active damage before engineering can deliver a permanent solution. They are common during vulnerability response, malware outbreaks, and post-update failures: for example, isolating a service, blocking a malicious rule, disabling a risky component, or applying a registry or group policy change. A temporary fix can buy time, preserve availability, and reduce exposure, but it should be tracked carefully because it may leave part of the weakness in place. Security teams usually pair it with monitoring, validation, and a plan to replace it with a permanent remediation.