Authentication

     (From Greek: αυθεντικός; real or genuine, from authentes; author). Authentication is the act of establishing or confirming something (or someone) as authentic, that is, that claims made by or about the subject are true. This might involve confirming the identity of a person, the origins of an artifact, or assuring that a computer program is a trusted one.

Electronic commerce

     Electronic commerce is commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily since the spread of the Internet. A wide variety of commerce is conducted in this way, spurring and drawing on innovations in electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web at least at some point in the transaction's lifecycle, although it can encompass a wider range of technologies such as e-mail as well.

Electronic Government (eGovernment)

     E-Government (short for electronic government, also known as e-gov, digital government, online government or transformational government) is a diffused neologism used to refer to the use of information and communication technology to provide and improve government services, transactions and interactions with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government.

Information Technology

     Information technology (IT), as defined by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), is "the study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware."^[1] IT deals with the use of electronic computers and computer software to convert, store, protect, process, transmit, and securely retrieve information.

Intellectual property rights (IPR)

     Intellectual property rights (IPR), very broadly, are rights granted to creators and owners of works that are the result of human intellectual creativity. These works can be in the industrial, scientific, literary or artistic domains. They can be in the form of an invention, a manuscript, a suite of software, or a business name, as examples.

ISO

     ISO 17799 is a 'code of practise', meaning that it lists a substantial number of specific security controls that may be applicable to an IT environment. Selection from these controls is normally performed via risk assessment, and the methods outlined within ISO 27001.

Malicious code

     Malicious code ( is also called vandals) is a new breed of Internet threat that cannot be efficiently controlled by conventional antivirus software alone. In contrast to viruses that require a user to execute a program in order to cause damage, vandals are auto-executable applications.

Malware (virus) Detection Software

      Malware, a portmanteau from the words malicious and software, is software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner's informed consent. The expression is a general term used by computer professionals to mean a variety of forms of hostile, intrusive, or annoying software or program code.  The term "computer virus" is sometimes used as a catch-all phrase to include all types of malware, including true viruses.

      Software is considered malware based on the perceived intent of the creator rather than any particular features. Malware includes computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, most rootkits, spyware, dishonest adware, crimeware and other malicious and unwanted software. In law, malware is sometimes known as a computer contaminant, for instance in the legal codes of several U. S. states, including California and West Virginia.

      Malware is not the same as defective software, that is, software which has a legitimate purpose but contains harmful bugs.

Social Engineering

     Social engineering is the act of manipulating people into performing actions or divulging confidential information. While similar to a confidence trick or simple fraud, the term typically applies to trickery or deception for the purpose of information gathering, fraud or computer system access; in most cases the attacker never comes face-to-face with the victim.

Spoofing

     Spoofing is the creation of TCP/IP packets using somebody else's IP address. Routers use the "destination IP" address in order to forward packets through the Internet, but ignore the "source IP" address. That address is only used by the destination machine when it responds back to the source.

Strong Encryption

     Strong Encryption an encryption method that uses a very large number as its cryptographic key. The larger the key, the longer it takes to unlawfully break the code. Today, 256 bits is considered strong encryption. As computers become faster, the length of the key must be increased.