IT Fundamentals and Terminology

A Trojan horse (or trojan) is a type of malicious software disguised as a legitimate, safe program. Once installed, it executes its hidden, harmful payload to compromise the user's system.

Standards are established specifications, guidelines, or characteristics approved by recognized organizations (such as ISO or ANSI) to ensure consistency, compatibility, and quality across products and services.

Spam refers to unsolicited, unwanted bulk messages sent over the internet, most commonly via email. It is the digital equivalent of physical junk mail.

Google is the de facto standard for search engines, commanding over 90% of the global search market share. Its dominance is so complete that the brand name has become a common verb meaning to search the web.

A help desk technician is a professional responsible for diagnosing, troubleshooting, and resolving technical hardware and software issues for users. The other terms refer to unrelated concepts: Greenfield is a type of project, index is a database or search term, and a hypertext link is a web element.

Voice over IP (VoIP) is a technology that allows voice communication and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks by converting voice signals into digital data packets. Visual Basic is a programming language, a virus is malicious software, and a viewer is an application for displaying files.

Spim is a specific term coined for unsolicited bulk messages (spam) sent over instant messaging services. Spyware is malicious software that gathers user information, spam is a general term mostly associated with email, and a spam filter is a tool used to block spam.

Database replication is the process of copying and maintaining database objects in multiple databases that make up a distributed database system to ensure consistency. A resource is an asset, a project is a planned undertaking, and a relative URL is a web address path.

Project scope defines the boundaries of the project, including the specific goals, deliverables, tasks, costs, and deadlines. Scope creep refers to uncontrolled changes or growth in a project's scope, a record is a database entry, and a router is a networking device.

A packet is a formatted unit of data carried by a packet-switched computer network. A patch is a software update, a peer-to-peer network is a decentralized communication model, and a patent is a legal protection for inventions.

A computer network is a set of connected computers sharing resources and communicating with each other. A network engineer is a professional who designs networks, a network interface card is hardware that connects a computer to a network, and a podcast is an audio program.

P2P stands for peer-to-peer, which is a decentralized communications model in which each party has the same capabilities and either party can initiate a communication session. Network is a broader term, a plug-in is a software component, and a packet is a unit of data.

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the Internet protocol suite to link devices worldwide. A header is data at the beginning of a packet or file, a homepage is the main page of a website, and Internet Protocol (IP) is a set of rules governing data routing.

A hash value (or simply hash) is a numeric value of a fixed length that uniquely identifies data, generated by a hashing algorithm. An index is used to speed up database queries, a firewall is a security system, and a host is a computer connected to a network.

In a database table, a field (or column) represents a specific category of information, such as a first name or phone number. A Deep URL is a link to a specific web page, a domain name is a website address, and a codec is a device or program that compresses data.

In computer science and general terminology, "dynamic" refers to systems or processes that are constantly changing, active, or progressing. A database is a structured set of data, a cookie is a small text file stored by a browser, and "filed" is a past tense verb or typo for field.

An attachment is a computer file sent along with an email message. AU is an audio file format or country code, a client is a device or software that accesses a service, and a blog is a regularly updated website.

Twitter (now known as X) is a social networking and microblogging service on which users post and interact with short messages known as tweets. Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram focus on different primary formats like profiles, disappearing multimedia, and photo sharing respectively.

Information Technology (IT) is the use of computers, storage, networking, and other physical devices, infrastructure, and processes to create, process, store, secure, and exchange all forms of electronic data. Cloud computing is a subset of IT, instant messaging is a communication method, and decryption is the process of decoding encrypted data.