IT Dictionary

A set of rules and protocols that allows different software applications to communicate with each other and share data or functionality.

A network of compromised devices (bots) controlled remotely by an attacker to carry out coordinated attacks like DDoS, spam, or credential stuffing.

An attack that systematically tries every possible combination of credentials until finding one that works, relying on computational power rather than cleverness.

The practice of automatically building, testing, and deploying code changes whenever developers push updates, catching bugs early and shipping faster.

A lightweight, portable package that bundles an application with its dependencies and runs in an isolated process on the host OS, sharing the kernel.

The maximum amount of text (measured in tokens) that a language model can read and consider at once when generating a response.

An attack that injects malicious JavaScript into a web page viewed by other users, allowing session theft, defacement, or redirection.

A distributed denial-of-service attack that overwhelms a target with traffic from many sources simultaneously, making it unavailable to legitimate users.

The router a device sends traffic to when the destination is outside its own local network.

A protocol that automatically assigns IP addresses and network settings to devices when they connect to a network.

The system that translates human-readable domain names into IP addresses so devices can find each other on a network.

A platform that packages applications into containers, providing a standardized way to build, ship, and run software consistently across any environment.

A security device or software that monitors and controls incoming and outgoing network traffic based on predefined rules.

A distributed version control system that tracks changes to files over time, enabling collaboration, branching, and complete history of every modification.

Software that creates and manages virtual machines by abstracting physical hardware resources and allocating them to isolated guest operating systems.

A lightweight, human-readable data format used to exchange structured information between systems, based on JavaScript object syntax.

An open-source platform for automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications across clusters of machines.

A Linux kernel module that turns the Linux operating system itself into a Type 1 hypervisor, enabling hardware-accelerated virtual machines.

A neural network trained on massive text datasets that can understand and generate human language, powering tools like ChatGPT and Claude.

A tool that checks whether another device on a network is reachable and how long the round trip takes.

The practice of designing and refining inputs to AI language models to get more accurate, useful, and consistent outputs.

A technique that improves AI responses by retrieving relevant information from your own documents and feeding it to the model alongside the question.

An architectural style for web APIs that uses standard HTTP methods to create, read, update, and delete resources identified by URLs.

An attack that inserts malicious SQL code into application inputs to manipulate or extract data from a database.

A cryptographic protocol for secure remote login, command execution, and file transfer over an unsecured network.

The encryption protocols that secure data in transit between a client and server, powering HTTPS and most encrypted internet communication.

A number that tells a device which part of an IP address identifies the network and which part identifies the specific device.

A transport protocol that guarantees reliable, ordered delivery of data between two devices by establishing a connection before sending.

The smallest unit of text that a language model processes, typically a word, part of a word, or a punctuation mark.

The neural network architecture behind modern AI language models, using a self-attention mechanism to process all input tokens simultaneously.

A lightweight transport protocol that sends data without establishing a connection first, prioritizing speed over guaranteed delivery.

A software-based emulation of a complete computer that runs its own operating system and applications, isolated from the host hardware.

A virtual local area network that segments a single physical switch into multiple isolated broadcast domains without needing separate hardware.

A virtual private network that creates an encrypted tunnel between your device and a remote network, protecting your traffic from interception.

A firewall that operates at the application layer (Layer 7) to protect web applications from attacks like SQL injection and cross-site scripting.

A software vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor and has no patch available, giving defenders zero days to prepare before it can be exploited.

A combined filesystem and volume manager that provides built-in data integrity verification, snapshots, compression, and RAID-like redundancy.