NI2/UNH CIEL: Glossary

Critical Infrastructure: “Systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters.” – USA Patriots Act

A&I	Assurance and Integration
Acceptable Risk	The level of Residual Risk that has been determined to be a reasonable level of potential loss/disruption (see Total Risk, Residual Risk, and Minimum Level of Protection).
Accountability	1) Principle that responsibilities for ownership and/or oversight of IS resources are explicitly assigned and that assignees are answerable to proper authorities for stewardship of resources under their control.
Accountability	2) The explicit assignment of responsibilities for oversight of areas of control to executives, managers, staff, owners, providers, and users of MEI Resource Elements.
ADES	Alaska Division of Emergency Services
AEMA	Alabama Emergency Management Agency
AES	Advanced Encryption Standard
AFIWC	Air Force Information Warfare Center (pronounced AFWIC)
AFWIC	Air Force Information Warfare Center
AGA	American Gas Association
Agency	Federal department, major organizational unit within a department, or independent agency.
AIA	The American Institute of Architects
AIDE	Automated Intrusion Detection Environment
Alert	Notice of specific attack directed at an organization’s resources.
Anomaly detection	Detecting intrusions by looking for activity that is different from the user’s or system’s normal behavior.
ANSI	American National Standards Institute
ANSIR	Awareness of National Security Issues and Response System
AOUSC	American Office of the United States Courts
Areas of control	Collectively, controls consist of the policies, procedures, practices and organizational structures designed to provide reasonable assurance that business objectives will be achieved and that undesired events will be prevented or detected and corrected.
Areas of potential compromise	These broad topical areas represent categories where losses can occur that will impact both a department or agency’s and its ability to conduct core missions.
ASCE	American Society of Civil Engineers
ASD C3I	Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence
ASHRAE	American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers
ASIS	American Society of Industrial Security
Assurance	Grounds for confidence that a system design meets its requirements, or that its implemented satisfies specifications, or that some specific property is satisfied.
Attack	1) A discrete malicious action of debilitating intent inflicted by one entity upon another. A threat might attack a critical infrastructure to destroy or incapacitate it.
Attack	2) Intentional attempt to bypass the physical or information security measures and controls protecting an IS.
Authentication	Security measure designed to establish the validity of a transmission, message or originator; or as a means of verifying a user's authorization to access specific types of information.
Authorization	Access privileges granted to a user, program, or process.
AWS	Analysis and Warning Section