What Does the sum of the risk presented by an application represent for that application ?

A security violation refers to a specific act or event that breaches a defined security policy, not the cumulative measure of risk an application presents.

The attack surface of an application is defined as the aggregate of all the different points (vectors) where an unauthorized user could attempt to enter or extract data, representing the sum total of risk the application presents. It includes all code paths, APIs, user inputs, and services the application exposes. Reducing the attack surface is a core secure design principle aimed at minimizing overall risk.

A HIPAA violation (note: the question misspells it as HIPPA) is a breach of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act's requirements for protecting health information and is a regulatory concept, not a measure of application risk.

A vulnerability is a specific, individual weakness or flaw in an application, whereas the attack surface represents the total aggregated risk across all such weaknesses and exposure points.