IT Glossary - ITU Online IT Training
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IT Glossary
Key Terms To Know In The IT Industry

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Information Hiding

The principle of segregation of the design decisions in a computer program that are most likely to change, thus protecting other parts of the program from extensive modification if the design decision is changed.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development, Programming

Information Kiosk

A computer terminal featuring specialized hardware and software that provides access to information and applications for communication, commerce, entertainment, or education.

You will find this term commonly used in General IT, Customer Service

Information Lifecycle Management (ILM)

Policies, processes, practices, and tools used to align the business value of information with the most appropriate and cost-effective IT infrastructure from the time information is conceived through its final disposition.

You will find this term commonly used in General IT, Data Management

Information Radiator

A large, highly visible display used in agile software development environments to provide team members and stakeholders with up-to-date information about the project's status, progress, and metrics.

You will find this term commonly used in Agile Development, Project Management

Information Retrieval

The science of searching for information in documents, searching for documents themselves, and also searching for metadata that describe data, and for databases of texts, images, or sounds.

You will find this term commonly used in Databases, AI

Information Security Analyst

Protects computer networks and systems by identifying and mitigating security vulnerabilities and threats.

You will find this term commonly used in Cybersecurity

Information Security Policy

A set of guidelines and standards designed to manage the protection of organizational information, ensuring confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data.

You will find this term commonly used in Security, IT Governance

Information Silo

An isolated point in a system where data is kept and not easily or safely accessible to other parts of the system.

You will find this term commonly used in Data Management, IT Management

Information Theory

A branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information. Historically, it was developed to find fundamental limits on compressing and reliably transmitting data.

You will find this term commonly used in Data Science, Cryptography

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Cloud

A form of cloud computing that provides virtualized computing resources over the internet, offering a complete infrastructure stack in a pay-as-you-go model.

You will find this term commonly used in Cloud Computing, Networking

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

The process of managing and provisioning computer data centers through machine-readable definition files, rather than physical hardware configuration or interactive configuration tools.

You will find this term commonly used in Cloud Computing, DevOps

Infrastructure Automation

The use of technology to perform tasks with reduced human assistance to manage and provision various types of infrastructure like physical and virtual servers.

You will find this term commonly used in Cloud Computing, General IT

Infrastructure Code

The practice of managing and provisioning computer data centers through machine-readable definition files, rather than physical hardware configuration or interactive configuration tools.

You will find this term commonly used in Cloud Computing, DevOps

Infrastructure Monitoring

The practice of collecting and analyzing data from IT infrastructure to ensure it is functioning optimally and to predict potential issues.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking, IT Management

Infrastructure Security

The protection of physical and virtual infrastructure against threats and vulnerabilities, including the security of data centers, network devices, and cloud environments.

You will find this term commonly used in Security, Cybersecurity

Ingress and Egress Filtering

Network security measures that control incoming (ingress) and outgoing (egress) traffic based on a set of rules, often to prevent unauthorized access and ensure data security.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking, Security

Ingress Controller

In the context of Kubernetes, it manages access to the services in a cluster by providing HTTP routing and load balancing to services based on declared ingress resources.

You will find this term commonly used in Cloud Computing, Networking

Ingress Filtering

A method used in computer security to prevent certain types of network traffic from entering a private network. It is used to enhance the security of a network by blocking potentially harmful traffic.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking, Security

Ingress Network Traffic

Incoming network traffic to a particular device, server, or network. It is often monitored and managed to ensure security and optimal performance.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking, Security

Ingress Networking

In the context of computer networking, ingress refers to incoming traffic to a network or service, often managed and controlled by routing and firewall policies to ensure security and efficient data flow.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking, Cloud Computing

Ingress Traffic

Incoming network traffic from external networks to internal resources.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking, Security

Inheritance

An object-oriented programming principle where a class can inherit properties and methods from another class.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development

Inheritance Hierarchy

In object-oriented programming, a structure that represents relationships between classes and subclasses, allowing for the reuse of code and properties.

You will find this term commonly used in Development, Software Engineering

Initial Coin Offering (ICO)

A fundraising mechanism in which new projects sell their underlying crypto tokens in exchange for bitcoin and ether. Itâs somewhat similar to an Initial Public Offering (IPO) in which investors purchase shares of a company.

You will find this term commonly used in Cryptocurrency, Finance

Initial Program Load (IPL)

The process of loading the operating system into the computer's main memory at startup.

You will find this term commonly used in Operating Systems, Hardware

Injection Attack

The introduction of malicious code into a computer program or system, commonly seen in SQL injection, where attackers exploit vulnerabilities to execute unauthorized SQL commands.

You will find this term commonly used in Security, Cybersecurity

Injection Flaw

A type of vulnerability in software applications that occurs when an attacker can insert (or "inject") a piece of malicious code into the program, typically through user input areas such as forms or URLs.

You will find this term commonly used in Cybersecurity, Software Development

Inkjet Printer

A type of printer that creates images by propelling droplets of ink onto paper.

You will find this term commonly used in Hardware, Peripheral Devices

Inkjet Printing Technology

A type of computer printing that recreates a digital image by propelling droplets of ink onto paper and plastic substrates, commonly used in personal and small business settings.

You will find this term commonly used in General IT, Hardware

Inline Assembly

The use of assembly language instructions within a program written in a high-level programming language. This can be used for optimization or to access processor-specific instructions not available in the high-level language.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development, Hardware

Inline Function

A function in programming where the compiler replaces a function call with the actual code of the function, potentially reducing the overhead of function calls.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development

Inline Query

A query that is placed within the code of another query or program, often used to simplify complex queries or calculations within a database or software application.

You will find this term commonly used in Development, Data Management

Innovation Ecosystem

A network or environment that supports and fosters innovation, consisting of relationships between individuals, organizations, technologies, and policies.

You will find this term commonly used in General IT, Business Strategy

Innovation Management

The discipline of managing processes in innovation. It can involve the creation of products, processes, and business models; it is often tied to technology and software development in IT contexts.

You will find this term commonly used in Business Management, IT Strategy

Innovative Disruption

A business or technology innovation that significantly alters the way that consumers, industries, or businesses operate, often displacing established market-leading firms, products, and alliances.

You will find this term commonly used in Business Strategy, Innovation

Innovative Technologies

Emerging or advanced technologies that have the potential to significantly impact business processes, service delivery, or product development, such as AI, blockchain, and IoT.

You will find this term commonly used in General IT, Development

Inode

A data structure on a filesystem on Linux/Unix that stores information about a file or a directory, including attributes like ownership, access mode (permissions), and file type.

You will find this term commonly used in Operating Systems, Storage

Input Method Editor (IME)

A program or operating system component that allows users to enter characters and symbols not found on their input devices. For example, typing in Chinese on a keyboard designed for English.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development, Localization

Input Sanitization

The process of cleaning up and validating user input before processing to prevent security vulnerabilities, such as injection attacks, by removing harmful data.

You will find this term commonly used in Web Development, Security

Input/Output Controller

A device or software that manages the communication between a computer and its external devices, handling input and output operations.

You will find this term commonly used in Hardware, Development

Instance Variable

A variable that is defined in a class for which each instantiated object of the class has a separate copy, or instance. These variables represent the object's state.

You will find this term commonly used in Development, Software Engineering

Instant Messaging (IM)

A type of online chat that offers real-time text transmission over the Internet.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking, Communication

Instruction Pipelining

A technique for implementing instruction-level parallelism within a single processor. Pipelining attempts to keep every part of the processor busy with some instruction by dividing incoming instructions into a series of sequential steps.

You will find this term commonly used in Hardware, Software Development

Instruction Set

The set of instructions that a processor can execute, defining how software can use the processor to perform operations.

You will find this term commonly used in Hardware, Software Development

Instruction Set Architecture (ISA)

The part of the computer architecture related to programming, including the native data types, instructions, registers, addressing modes, memory architecture, interrupt and exception handling, and external IO.

You will find this term commonly used in Computer Architecture, General IT

Instruction-Level Parallelism (ILP)

A measure of how many of the instructions in a computer program can be executed simultaneously.

You will find this term commonly used in Computer Architecture, Hardware

Integer Overflow

A condition that occurs when an arithmetic operation attempts to create a numeric value that is outside of the range that can be represented with a given number of digits.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development, Security

Integrated Circuit (IC)

A set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. ICs can perform a variety of functions, including processing, memory, and logic.

You will find this term commonly used in Hardware, Electronics

Integrated Circuit Card Identifier (ICCID)

A unique identifier of a SIM card in a mobile phone.

You will find this term commonly used in Mobile Technology, Networking

Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

A software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development, including a source code editor, build automation tools, and a debugger.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development, General IT

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