Abstract: Ontology is applied in various domains, including intelligence system, computer sciences, information techno- logy, and biomedical sciences et al. hhe analysis of ontology becomes the core of knowledge representation system in dif- ferent domains. At the same time the study of ontology facilitates knowledge sharing and reuse. Applying ontology in in- formation security makes security ontology(SO). hhis paper mainly described the following aspects of SO: present and history of SO, principle, method, and meanings of building SO, existing SO and its categories, dedcription language and application of SO. hhen according to above analysis, this article concluded its structural system, depicted knowledge rep- resentation and reasoning ability of SO, and pointed out there is a long way to go in building of SO, ontology evaluation, ontology learning, and application of SO.

Key words: Security ontology, Ontology, Formal, OWI_, Information security