Computer Science key terms

Access to computer systems or data without permission from someone entitled to authorise it.

A standard that assigns unique codes to characters from the world's major writing systems, as well as many symbols and emoji.

A Uniform Resource Locator: an address identifying a resource, such as a web page, and how to access it.

Permissions that determine which resources a user can access and what actions they can perform.

The means through which a user interacts with a computer system.

The creation and maintenance of user accounts, including login security, individual settings and access rights.

A feature or behaviour that a program must provide to meet a user’s needs.

Software designed to perform particular tasks that maintain, organise, enhance or troubleshoot a computer system.

A named memory location used to hold a value that can change while a program runs.

An area of secondary storage used as an extension of RAM when there is insufficient space in RAM.

Malware that infects a host file and can replicate when the infected file is executed.

Describes memory whose contents are lost when its power supply is removed.

Memory that loses its contents when its power supply is switched off.

A computer design in which program instructions and data are stored in the same memory and instructions are fetched by the CPU for processing.

A weakness in a computer system that an attacker could exploit.

A Wide Area Network: a network covering a large geographical area, often connecting LANs using communication infrastructure provided by other organisations.

A server that stores website resources and supplies them to clients when requested.

A wireless networking standard commonly used to connect devices to a network through a wireless access point.

A connection that transmits data between devices through a physical cable.

A device that allows wireless devices to connect to a network; it may be separate or built into a router.

A device that uses radio signals to allow wireless devices to connect to a local area network.

A connection that transmits data between devices using radio waves rather than a physical cable.

The collection of websites and web pages accessed over the Internet using a web browser.

Standalone malware that can replicate and spread automatically between computers without requiring a user to execute an infected host file.

An operation that sends data from a program into a file for storage.