DSST MIS key terms

The maximum rate at which data can be carried over a communications channel, usually measured in bits per second. Higher bandwidth allows more simultaneous traffic but does not by itself guarantee faster response times.

A shared set of rules governing how devices format, address, transmit, and acknowledge messages on a network. Without a common protocol, sender and receiver cannot interpret each other's signals correctly.

A transmission method that breaks messages into small labeled units called packets, which travel independently and are reassembled at the destination. It uses shared links efficiently and tolerates partial network failure.

A network covering a limited geographic area such as one building or campus, typically owned and managed by a single organization. LANs offer high speed and low cost per connected device.

A network that spans large distances and links sites across cities or countries, often relying on leased carrier circuits or public infrastructure. WAN costs and latency are typically higher than LAN costs.

The delay between sending a request and receiving a response, shaped by distance, congestion, and intermediate devices. Interactive applications suffer when latency is high even if raw bandwidth is plentiful.

A family of standards for wired local networks that defines cabling, signaling, and frame formats. It dominates office LANs because it is inexpensive, fast, and widely interoperable across vendors.

A device or software filter that inspects traffic crossing a trust boundary and permits or blocks it according to configured rules. It enforces an access policy between internal systems and untrusted networks.

Transforming readable data into ciphertext using a key so that only holders of the matching key can recover the original content. It protects confidentiality during storage and transmission.

Verifying that a user, device, or system is genuinely who or what it claims to be, typically through passwords, tokens, or biometrics. It answers identity questions before authorization grants access.

Determining which resources and actions an authenticated identity is permitted to use. It follows authentication and is usually expressed as roles, permissions, or access control lists.

A monitoring tool that inspects network or host activity for patterns indicating attacks or policy violations and raises alerts. It observes and reports rather than necessarily blocking traffic.

Software written to damage systems, steal data, or gain unauthorized access, including viruses, worms, ransomware, and spyware. Defenses combine patching, filtering, user training, and endpoint scanning.

A social-engineering attack that impersonates a trusted party through email or messages to trick recipients into revealing credentials or clicking malicious links. Awareness training and sender verification reduce risk.

A digitally signed credential binding a public key to a verified identity, issued by a certificate authority. Browsers and servers use certificates to establish trusted encrypted sessions.

A structured sequence of phases for building information systems, commonly including planning, analysis, design, implementation, and maintenance. It provides checkpoints and documentation across a project's life.

The disciplined process of eliciting, documenting, and validating what a system must do and how well it must perform it. Clear functional and nonfunctional requirements reduce costly rework later.

An early assessment of whether a proposed system is technically workable, economically justified, legally permissible, and operationally acceptable. It informs the decision to proceed, revise, or abandon a project.

A graphical model showing processes, data stores, external entities, and the flows of data among them. It emphasizes what happens to data rather than control logic or timing.

A model depicting entities, their attributes, and the relationships among them, usually for database design. Cardinality notations show whether one or many instances participate in each relationship.

A description of a goal-oriented interaction between an actor and a system, capturing a sequence of steps and alternate paths. Use cases help translate user needs into testable functional requirements.

Building an early, partial version of a system to clarify requirements and gather user feedback before full development. Prototypes may be discarded or evolved into the final product.

A technique comparing the expected costs of a project with its anticipated tangible and intangible benefits over time. Results guide go/no-go decisions and prioritization among competing proposals.

A ratio expressing net gain from an investment relative to its cost, often stated as a percentage. It lets managers compare projects of different sizes on a common financial basis.

The full lifetime expense of acquiring and operating an asset, including purchase, installation, training, support, upgrades, and disposal. It reveals costs hidden by purchase price alone.

An interactive application that combines data, models, and analytical tools to help managers evaluate semi-structured problems. It supports judgment rather than automating the decision itself.

A dashboard-oriented system presenting summarized key indicators and trend views for senior managers. It emphasizes graphical display, drill-down, and minimal query effort.

A quantifiable measure chosen to track progress toward a specific organizational objective. Good indicators are few, clearly defined, and tied to decisions someone can act on.

Personal know-how and insight that is difficult to write down or transfer, such as judgment built from experience. It spreads mainly through mentoring, observation, and collaboration.

Knowledge that has been codified into documents, procedures, manuals, or databases so it can be stored and shared. Its main challenges are currency, findability, and consistent use.

Technology and practices for capturing, organizing, retrieving, and distributing organizational knowledge. Effective systems combine repositories with incentives and processes that encourage contribution.

Groups of practitioners who share a domain of interest and learn from one another through ongoing interaction. They are a primary channel for moving tacit knowledge across an organization.

A centralized repository holding integrated, time-stamped data extracted from many operational systems for query and analysis. It is typically subject-oriented and kept separate from transaction processing.

A smaller, focused subset of a warehouse serving one department or business function. Marts shorten query times and simplify access but can duplicate data if not governed consistently.

The pipeline that pulls data from source systems, cleans and standardizes it, then loads it into a warehouse. Transformation resolves inconsistent formats, codes, and duplicates before analysis.

A multidimensional approach to querying summarized data by dimensions such as time, product, and region. Operations like slice, dice, drill-down, and roll-up let analysts explore patterns quickly.

The degree to which data is accurate, complete, consistent, timely, and fit for its intended use. Poor quality silently corrupts reports and models, so it must be measured and governed.

Structured information describing other data, such as definitions, sources, ownership, formats, and refresh dates. It makes warehouse contents understandable, traceable, and governable.

Applying statistical and machine-learning techniques to large datasets to discover previously unknown patterns and relationships. Results are hypotheses to validate, not automatic proof of cause.

A supervised technique that learns from labeled historical examples to assign new records to predefined categories. Accuracy is judged on unseen data, not on the training set.

An unsupervised technique that groups records so members of a group resemble each other more than outsiders. It reveals natural segments without requiring predefined labels.

Patterns stating that items or events tend to co-occur, expressed with measures of support and confidence. Retail basket analysis uses them to guide placement and cross-selling decisions.