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

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Key Escrow Service

A third-party service that holds cryptographic keys in escrow to facilitate key recovery or lawful access to encrypted data under certain conditions.

You will find this term commonly used in Cryptography, Legal

Key Escrow Systems

Systems designed to securely store cryptographic keys with a trusted third party, allowing authorized parties to access the keys under predefined conditions.

You will find this term commonly used in Cryptography, Security

Key Exchange

A method in cryptography by which cryptographic keys are exchanged between two parties, allowing use of a cryptographic algorithm.

You will find this term commonly used in Security, Cryptography

Key Exchange Algorithm

An algorithm that determines how cryptographic keys are exchanged between parties, ensuring secure communication over an insecure channel.

You will find this term commonly used in Security, Cryptography

Key Exchange Mechanism

A method used in cryptography to safely exchange cryptographic keys between parties, ensuring that a shared secret can be established securely over an insecure channel.

You will find this term commonly used in Cryptography, Network Security

Key Fob

A small security hardware device with built-in authentication used to control and secure access to network services and data, often carrying a digital signature or other secure means of identity verification.

You will find this term commonly used in Security, Access Control

Key Generation

The process of generating keys for encryption or decryption in cryptographic algorithms, crucial for secure communication in networks and systems.

You will find this term commonly used in Security, Cryptography

Key Generation Algorithm

An algorithm used to generate cryptographic keys that are both unpredictable and unique, ensuring the security of digital communications and data.

You will find this term commonly used in Cryptography, Security

Key Length

The size of a key (usually in bits) used in a cryptographic algorithm, indicating the algorithm's strength, with longer keys providing a higher level of security.

You will find this term commonly used in Cryptography, Security

Key Management

The process of managing cryptographic keys in a cryptosystem, which includes the generation, exchange, storage, use, and replacement of keys.

You will find this term commonly used in Security, Cryptography

Key Management Infrastructure (KMI)

A comprehensive system that provides the framework for managing cryptographic keys, including their generation, distribution, storage, and destruction, ensuring secure communication.

You will find this term commonly used in Cryptography, Security

Key Management Lifecycle

The comprehensive process of managing cryptographic keys from their creation and distribution to their rotation, renewal, and eventual destruction, ensuring their effective use and maintaining security protocols.

You will find this term commonly used in Cryptography, Security

Key Management System

A system designed for the secure management of cryptographic keys, including their generation, distribution, storage, rotation, and deletion.

You will find this term commonly used in Security, Cryptography

Key Material

In cryptography, any secret, cryptographic key, or parameter that is used to secure communication or data. It is the actual data used to encrypt and decrypt messages.

You will find this term commonly used in Cryptography, Security

Key Pair

A pair of cryptographic keys used in public key cryptography, consisting of a public key (which may be known to others) and a private key (which must be kept secret by the owner).

You will find this term commonly used in Security, Cryptography

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

A measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives. Organizations use KPIs to evaluate their success at reaching targets.

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

Key Performance Indicator Visualization

The graphical representation of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to help stakeholders quickly understand data insights and make informed decisions. Visualizations include charts, graphs, and dashboards.

You will find this term commonly used in Business Intelligence, Data Visualization

Key Performance Metrics

Quantitative measures used to assess the success and performance of an organization, project, or service, guiding strategic decisions and improvements.

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

Key Performance Parameters

Specific measures that are used to evaluate the success of a particular activity or program, often related to achieving critical objectives.

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

Key Press Event

An event in programming that occurs when a key on the keyboard is pressed, often used in software development to trigger specific actions or responses within applications.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development, User Interface

Key Recovery

The process of retrieving cryptographic keys when they are lost or the need to decrypt old or archived messages without the original encryption key, often used in data recovery scenarios.

You will find this term commonly used in Cryptography, Security

Key Revocation

The process of invalidating a cryptographic key before its scheduled expiration, often due to compromise or loss, ensuring that it can no longer be used for cryptographic purposes.

You will find this term commonly used in Security

Key Risk Indicators (KRIs)

Metrics used to provide an early signal of increasing risk exposures in various areas of an organization, aiding in the identification, measurement, and monitoring of risk.

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

Key Rotation

The practice of periodically changing encryption keys or other cryptographic keys to enhance security and reduce the risk of key compromise.

You will find this term commonly used in Cryptography, Security

Key Serial Number

A unique identifier assigned to a cryptographic key or digital certificate to facilitate its management, tracking, and revocation in complex systems.

You will find this term commonly used in Cryptography, Security

Key Signature

In cryptography, a digital signature created by using a private key to certify the authenticity of a document, message, or software.

You will find this term commonly used in Security, Cryptography

Key Signing Party

An event where people present their cryptographic keys to others in person for the purpose of verifying the key's authenticity and the identity of the key holder, often used to increase the trust in public key infrastructure (PKI).

You will find this term commonly used in Cryptography, Network Security

Key Usage

A term in digital certificates that describes the purpose of the public key contained within the certificate, such as digital signature, key encipherment, or data encipherment.

You will find this term commonly used in Cryptography, Security

Key Value Pair

A fundamental data representation in computing systems and programming languages, where a unique key is associated with a specific value, used extensively in associative arrays and database systems.

You will find this term commonly used in Programming, Databases

Key Value Store Replication

The process of duplicating the data from one key-value store to another to increase data availability, fault tolerance, or for load balancing purposes.

You will find this term commonly used in Databases, Data Storage

Key Vault

A secure, centralized storage solution for cryptographic keys and other secrets used in applications and services, designed to prevent unauthorized access and simplify key management.

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

Key-Value Coding (KVC)

A coding technique that allows objects in programming languages to access properties by string name rather than through explicit getters and setters, facilitating dynamic data access.

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

Key-Value Database

A type of non-relational database that stores data as a collection of key-value pairs, where a key serves as a unique identifier for its associated value, optimized for retrieval and storage efficiency.

You will find this term commonly used in Databases, Data Storage

Key-Value Store

A type of non-relational database that uses a simple key-value method to store data, making it efficient for lookup and retrieval operations.

You will find this term commonly used in Databases, NoSQL

Keyboard Shortcut

A key or combination of keys providing quick access to a particular function within a computer program or operating system.

You will find this term commonly used in General IT, User Interface

Keychain

A system in macOS and iOS for storing and managing passwords, cryptographic keys, and other sensitive data, protected by a master password.

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

Keyed Hash

A hash function that uses a secret key, ensuring that the hash value is unique to the key and message combination, used in various security applications to verify data integrity and authenticity.

You will find this term commonly used in Security, Cryptography

Keyed-Hash Message Authentication Code (HMAC)

A specific type of message authentication code (MAC) involving a cryptographic hash function and a secret cryptographic key, used to verify both the data integrity and the authenticity of a message.

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

Keyframe

In animation and video editing, a frame in which the position, scaling, or rotation of an object is explicitly defined, with the values at intermediate frames usually calculated by the software.

You will find this term commonly used in Computer Graphics, Animation

Keyframe Animation

A technique in computer graphics and animation for creating movement and shape changes by specifying key points in time at which the animation takes a specific configuration.

You will find this term commonly used in Computer Graphics, Animation

Keyframe Interpolation

A technique used in animation that calculates intermediate frames between two keyframes to create the illusion of movement, allowing for smooth transitions in animated sequences.

You will find this term commonly used in Animation, Video Editing

Keylogger

A type of surveillance software (considered spyware or malware when used maliciously) that has the capability to record every keystroke made on a computer, to monitor user activity silently.

You will find this term commonly used in Security, Cybersecurity

Keystone

An open-source identity service provided by OpenStack for authentication and high-level authorization across OpenStack services, allowing for the management of users and projects.

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

Keystone (OpenStack)

The identity service used by OpenStack for authentication and high-level authorization, providing a central directory of users mapped to the OpenStack services they can access.

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

Keystone Authentication

An authentication service used in OpenStack cloud computing platforms for managing identities, tokens, and policies to enable API security across the cloud environment.

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

Keyword

A word or phrase that has a particular significance or meaning in a specific context, such as in programming, search engine optimization (SEO), or in identifying variables and functions in code.

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

Keyword Analysis

The practice of analyzing the keywords or phrases that bring visitors to a website through organic and paid search, crucial for SEO strategies.

You will find this term commonly used in Digital Marketing, SEO

Keyword Stuffing

The practice of overloading web content or meta tags in the HTML code with the same keyword phrase in an attempt to manipulate a site's ranking in search engine results, often penalized by search engines.

You will find this term commonly used in Digital Marketing, SEO

Keyword-driven Testing

A software testing methodology that uses keywords to represent actions to be performed on the application under test, making test automation more accessible to non-programmers.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Testing, Quality Assurance

Kibana

An open-source data visualization dashboard for Elasticsearch. Kibana provides visualization capabilities on top of the content indexed on an Elasticsearch cluster, allowing users to create bar, line, and scatter plots, or pie charts and maps on top of large volumes of data.

You will find this term commonly used in Data Visualization, Big Data

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