Glossary
Knowledge management
An ITSM practice aimed at gathering, analyzing, storing, and sharing knowledge within an organization. Its primary purpose is to improve efficiency by reducing the need to rediscover knowledge.
Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL®)
A set of detailed practices for IT service management (ITSM) that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of the business.
Service desk
The point of communication between service providers and the organization’s users.
Service desk manager
The person who oversees day-to-day activities of the service desk and is responsible for its performance.
IT technicians
Those who diagnose, repair, and maintain hardware and software components to ensure the smooth operation of computer systems. They are the primary point of contact for IT support within a company.
Continual service improvement (CSI)
A method to identify and execute opportunities to improve IT processes and services, and measure these efforts taken over time.
Web application firewall (WAF)
A firewall that protects web applications from a variety of application-layer attacks, such as cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, and cookie poisoning.
Virtual private network (VPN)
A tool that gives users privacy while browsing the internet by creating a private network that connects remote users to a company's internal network.
Configuration management system (CMS)
A set of tools and data that is used for collecting, storing, managing, updating, analyzing, and presenting data about all configuration items and their relationships. A CMS may manage more than one physical configuration management database (CMDB).
Configuration management database (CMDB)
An ITSM database that stores all relevant information about the hardware and software components used in an organization.
Incident
An unplanned interruption to an IT service, or a reduction in the quality of an IT service. Failure of a configuration item, even if it has not yet affected a service, is also an incident (e.g. failure of one disk from a mirror set).
