Gateway

A network point that acts as an entrance to another network

Hardening

Hardening is the process of identifying and fixing vulnerabilities on a system.

Honey pot

Programs that simulate one or more network services that you designate on your computer's ports. An attacker assumes you're running vulnerable services that can be used to break into the machine. A honey pot can be used to log access attempts to those ports including the attacker's keystrokes. This could give you advanced warning of a more concerted attack

HTTP Proxy

An HTTP Proxy is a server that acts as a middleman in the communication between HTTP clients and servers.

HTTPS

When used in the first part of a URL (the part that precedes the colon and specifies an access scheme or protocol), this term specifies the use of HTTP enhanced by a security mechanism, which is usually SSL.

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

The set of markup symbols or codes inserted in a file intended for display on a World Wide Web browser page.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)

The protocol in the Internet Protocol (IP) family used to transport hypertext documents across an internet.

Incremental Backups

Incremental backups only backup the files that have been modified since the last backup. If dump levels are used, incremental backups only backup files changed since last backup of a lower dump level.

Internet

A term to describe connecting multiple separate networks together.

Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP)

An Internet Standard protocol that is used to report error conditions during IP datagram processing and to exchange other information concerning the state of the IP network.

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)

The body that defines standard Internet operating protocols such as TCP/IP. The IETF is supervised by the Internet Society Internet Architecture Board (IAB). IETF members are drawn from the Internet Society's individual and organization membership.

Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP)

A protocol that defines how a client should fetch mail from and return mail to a mail server. IMAP is intended as a replacement for or extension to the Post Office Protocol (POP). It is defined in RFC 1203 (v3) and RFC 2060 (v4).

Internet Protocol (IP)

The method or protocol by which data is sent from one computer to another on the Internet.

Internet Protocol Security (IPsec)

A developing standard for security at the network or packet processing layer of network communication.

Internet Standard

A specification, approved by the IESG and published as an RFC, that is stable and well-understood, is technically competent, has multiple, independent, and interoperable implementations with substantial operational experience, enjoys significant public support, and is recognizably useful in some or all parts of the Internet.

Interrupt

An Interrupt is a signal that informs the OS that something has occurred.

Intranet

A computer network, especially one based on Internet technology, that an organization uses for its own internal, and usually private, purposes and that is closed to outsiders.

Intrusion Detection

A security management system for computers and networks. An IDS gathers and analyzes information from various areas within a computer or a network to identify possible security breaches, which include both intrusions (attacks from outside the organization) and misuse (attacks from within the organization).

IP Address

A computer's inter-network address that is assigned for use by the Internet Protocol and other protocols. An IP version 4 address is written as a series of four 8-bit numbers separated by periods.

IP Flood

A denial of service attack that sends a host more echo request ("ping") packets than the protocol implementation can handle.

IP Forwarding

IP forwarding is an Operating System option that allows a host to act as a router. A system that has more than 1 network interface card must have IP forwarding turned on in order for the system to be able to act as a router.

IP Spoofing

The technique of supplying a false IP address.

IPsec VPN

An IPsec VPN uses the standard IPsec mechanism to establish a VPN over the public Internet. An IPsec VPN is most useful for establishing a VPN between fixed end-points, such as two offices.

For supporting roaming users, an SSL VPN is generally a better choice because it requires no installation or configuration on the client machine and enforces endpoint security.

ISO

International Organization for Standardization, a voluntary, non-treaty, non-government organization, established in 1947, with voting members that are designated standards bodies of participating nations and non-voting observer organizations.

Issue-Specific Policy

An Issue-Specific Policy is intended to address specific needs within an organization, such as a password policy.

Kerberos

A system developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that depends on passwords and symmetric cryptography (DES) to implement ticket-based, peer entity authentication service and access control service distributed in a client-server network environment.

Kernel

The essential center of a computer operating system, the core that provides basic services for all other parts of the operating system. A synonym is nucleus. A kernel can be contrasted with a shell, the outermost part of an operating system that interacts with user commands. Kernel and shell are terms used more frequently in Unix and some other operating systems than in IBM mainframe systems.

Latency

Latency is the largest cause of slow Web applications over the WAN or internet. Latency describes the time delay experienced while a data packet moves from one point to another, usually caused by physical distance and high round-trip times. Latency can also be introduced by compute-intensive processing such as SSL handshaking, bulk encryption/decryption, and TCP session management.

Along with network congestion, jitter, and packet loss, latency can have a profound effect on application performance -- even over networks with abundant bandwidth.

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)

A software protocol for enabling anyone to locate organizations, individuals, and other resources such as files and devices in a network, whether on the public Internet or on a corporate Intranet.

Load Balancer

A load balancer is a device that acts as a reverse proxy and distributes network or application traffic across a number of servers. Load balancers are used to increase capacity (concurrent users) and reliability of applications. They improve the overall performance of applications by decreasing the burden on servers associated with managing and maintaining application and network sessions, as well as by performing application-specific tasks.

Load balancers are generally grouped into two categories: Layer 4 and Layer 7. Layer 4 load balancers act upon data found in network and transport layer protocols (IP, TCP, FTP, UDP). Layer 7 load balancers distribute requests based upon data found in application layer protocols such as HTTP.

Requests are received by both types of load balancers and they are distributed to a particular server based on a configured algorithm. Some industry standard algorithms are:

• Round robin
• Weighted round robin
• Least connections
• Least response time

Layer 7 load balancers can further distribute requests based on application specific data such as HTTP headers, cookies, or data within the application message itself, such as the value of a specific parameter.

Load balancers ensure reliability and availability by monitoring the "health" of applications and only sending requests to servers and applications that can respond in a timely manner.

Log

A record of the events occurring within an organization’s systems and networks.

Log Analysis

Studying log entries to identify events of interest or suppress log entries for insignificant events.

Log Archival

Retaining logs for an extended period of time, typically on removable media, a storage area network (SAN), or a specialized log archival appliance or server.

Log Clearing

Removing all entries from a log that precede a certain date and time.

Log Compression

Storing a log file in a way that reduces the amount of storage space needed for the file without altering the meaning of its contents.

Log Conversion

Parsing a log in one format and storing its entries in a second format.

Log Entry

An individual record within a log.

Log File Integrity Checking

Comparing the current message digest for a log file to the original message digest to determine if the log file has been modified.

Log Management

The process for generating, transmitting, storing, analyzing, and disposing of log data.

Log Management Infrastructure

The hardware, software, networks, and media used to generate, transmit, store, analyze, and dispose of log data.

Log Normalization

Converting each log data field to a particular data representation and categorizing it consistently.

Log Parsing

Extracting data from a log so that the parsed values can be used as input for another logging process.

Log Preservation

Keeping logs that normally would be discarded, because they contain records of activity of particular interest.

Log Reduction

Removing unneeded entries from a log to create a new log that is smaller.

Log Reporting

Displaying the results of log analysis.

Log Retention

Archiving logs on a regular basis as part of standard operational activities.

Log Rotation

Closing a log file and opening a new log file when the first log file is considered to be complete.

Log Viewing

Displaying log entries in a human-readable format.