IT standards and organizations

Terms related to information technology (IT) standards, including definitions about IT organizations and words and phrases about policies and compliance.
  • Total Quality Management (TQM) - Total Quality Management (TQM) is a management framework based on the belief that an organization can build long-term success by having all its members -- from low-level workers to its highest-ranking executives -- focus on improving quality and, thus, delivering customer satisfaction.
  • transparency - Transparency is the quality of being easily seen through, while transparency in a business or governance context refers to being open and honest.
  • transport layer - The transport layer is Layer 4 of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) communications model.
  • Transport Layer Security (TLS) - Transport Layer Security (TLS) is an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard protocol that provides authentication, privacy and data integrity between two communicating computer applications.
  • UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration) - UDDI, or Universal Description, Discovery and Integration, is an Extensible Language Markup (XML)-based standard to describe, publish and find information about web services.
  • Unicode - Unicode is a universal character encoding standard that is maintained by the Unicode Consortium, a standards organization founded in 1991 for the internationalization of software and services.
  • Universal Naming Convention (UNC) - The Universal Naming Convention (UNC) is a standard for naming resources -- such as files and devices -- that are shared by computers on a network.
  • Universal Process Notation (UPN) - Universal Process Notation is a method for illustrating the steps in a business process.
  • USB 3.0 (SuperSpeed USB) - USB 3.0 is a Universal Serial Bus (USB) data transfer standard that is backwards compatible with USB 2.
  • Uuencode (Uuencode/Uudecode) - Uuencode (also called Uuencode/Uudecode) is a popular utility for encoding and decoding files exchanged between users or systems in a network.
  • velocity - Velocity is a vector expression of the displacement that an object or particle undergoes with respect to time.
  • vertical market - A vertical market is made up of companies that offer goods and services to meet the needs of customers in a specific industry or niche market.
  • VistA EHR - VistA EHR, more formally known as the VistA Computerized Patient Record System, is an open source electronic health record (EHR) system developed by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
  • volt-ampere (VA) - A volt-ampere (VA) is a measurement of power in a direct current (DC) electrical circuit.
  • W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) - The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is an international organization that creates standards for the World Wide Web.
  • watt-hour (Wh) - The watt-hour, which is symbolized Wh, is a unit of energy equivalent to one watt of power expended for one hour of time.
  • well-known port numbers - The well-known port numbers are the port numbers that are reserved for assignment by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for use by the application end points that communicate using the Internet's Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) or the User Datagram Protocol (UDP).
  • What is a framework? - In general, a framework is a real or conceptual structure intended to serve as a support or guide for the building of something that expands the structure into something useful.
  • What is a SSL (secure sockets layer)? - Secure sockets layer (SSL) is a networking protocol designed for securing connections between web clients and web servers over an insecure network, such as the internet.
  • What is an electronic health record (EHR)? - An electronic health record (EHR) is an individual's official health document that's shared among multiple facilities and agencies.
  • What is an entrepreneur (entrepreneurship)? - An entrepreneur is an individual who identifies a need in the marketplace and works to fulfill it.
  • What is Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code? - Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) is a medical code set that enables physicians and other healthcare providers to describe and report the medical, surgical, and diagnostic procedures and services they perform to government and private payers, researchers and other interested parties.
  • What is Data Encryption Standard (DES)? - Data Encryption Standard (DES) is an outdated symmetric key method of data encryption.
  • What is FTP? - File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a network protocol for transmitting files between computers over TCP/IP connections.
  • What is HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health) Act of 2009? - The HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health) Act of 2009 is legislation that was created to stimulate the adoption of electronic health records (EHR) and the supporting technology in the United States.
  • What is ICD-9-CM (International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification)? - The International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification, also known simply as ICD-9-CM, is the U.
  • What is ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol)? - ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) is a network layer error-reporting protocol that's used to communicate data transmission problems.
  • What is IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6)? - Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a set of specifications from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that is responsible for identifying network devices and routing traffic across the internet.
  • What is ITIL? A guide to the IT Infrastructure Library - ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is a framework designed to standardize the selection, planning, delivery, maintenance and overall lifecycle of IT services within a business.
  • What is LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol)? - LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is a software protocol used for locating data about organizations, individuals and other resources, such as files and devices, on public and corporate networks.
  • What is matter? - Matter is a substance made up of various types of particles that occupies physical space and has inertia.
  • What is PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard)? - The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a widely accepted set of policies and procedures intended to optimize the security of credit, debit and cash card transactions and protect cardholders against misuse of their personal information.
  • What is quality assurance (QA)? - Quality assurance (QA) is any systematic process of determining whether a product or service meets specified requirements.
  • What is remote desktop protocol (RDP)? - Remote desktop protocol (RDP) is a secure network communications protocol developed by Microsoft.
  • What is SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)? - SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is a TCP/IP protocol used in sending and receiving emails over a network such as the internet.
  • What is SSH (Secure Shell) and How Does It Work? - SSH (Secure Shell or Secure Socket Shell) is a network protocol that gives users -- particularly systems administrators -- a secure way to access a computer over an unsecured network.
  • What is TCP/IP? - TCP/IP stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol and is a suite of communication protocols used to interconnect network devices on the internet.
  • What is the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA)? - The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) allows United States government agencies and non-government entities to share information with each other as they investigate cyberattacks.
  • What is the Driver's Privacy Protection Act (DPPA)? - The Driver's Privacy Protection Act (DPPA) is a United States federal law designed to protect the personally identifiable information of licensed drivers from improper use or disclosure.
  • Wien's constant - Wien's constant is a physical constant that is used in defining the relationship between the thermodynamic temperature of a black body (an object that radiates electromagnetic energy perfectly) and the wavelength at which the intensity of the radiation is the greatest.
  • Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) - Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is a set of specifications from Microsoft for consolidating the management of devices and applications in a network from Windows computing systems.
  • Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) - Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is a specification for a set of communication protocols to standardize the way wireless devices, such as mobile phones and radio transceivers, can be used for internet access, including email, the web, newsgroups and instant messaging.
  • WLAN Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure (WAPI) - WLAN Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure (WAPI) is a wireless local area network security standard officially supported by the Chinese government.
  • work - Work is force applied over distance.
  • World Wide Web (WWW) - The World Wide Web -- also known as the web, WWW or W3 -- refers to all the public websites or pages that users can access on their local computers and other devices through the internet.
  • WSTx (Web Services Transactions) - WSTx (Web Services Transaction) is a set of XML markup specifications designed to permit the use of open, standard protocols for secure, reliable transactions across the Web.
  • XML (Extensible Markup Language) - XML (Extensible Markup Language) is used to describe data.
  • XML Schema Definition (XSD) - XML Schema Definition or XSD is a recommendation by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to describe and validate the structure and content of an XML document.
  • yottabyte (YB) - A yottabyte (YB) is a measure of theoretical storage capacity and data volumes equal to 2 to the 80th power bytes, or approximately a million trillion megabytes (MB).
  • Zigbee - Zigbee is a standards-based wireless technology developed to enable low-cost, low-power wireless machine-to-machine (M2M) and internet of things (IoT) networks.
  • Zulu (Zulu time) - Zulu (Zulu time) is used in the military and navigation for timekeeping purposes to avert confusion when coordinating with countries using other time standards.