OCSF, the Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework, is a shared structure for representing security events from different products and data sources. It defines common fields and event categories so that, for example, tools can interpret comparable identity, endpoint, cloud, or network activity more consistently.
Normalization into OCSF can make it easier for defenders to search and correlate telemetry across systems, build detections, and analyze data in a security data lake without relying on separate vendor-specific formats. In practice, teams map each source’s fields to the framework and maintain those mappings as products and event formats change. Inconsistent mappings can produce incomplete or misleading results, so schema quality and access controls remain important.