Terminology

2185 terms, tools, patterns and metrics an architect is expected to use precisely. Each one gets a short explanation of what it is, and — where it matters — what it is commonly confused with. Search filters as you type; the column headers sort.

All areas2185 Architecture Fundamentals77 Distributed Systems107 Data Architecture110 Cloud Architecture89 Networking88 API & Integration Architecture82 Reliability & Resilience75 Observability70 Performance & Capacity Engineering72 Security Architecture81 Cost Architecture & FinOps66 Business Architecture67 Architecture Communication67 Enterprise Architecture66 Legacy Modernization66 AI-Era Architecture69 Software Architecture & Engineering71 Architecture Patterns71 Architecture Decision-Making63 The Architect's Meta-Skills61 Delivery & Release Engineering66 Platform Engineering & Developer Experience70 Testing & Quality Architecture66 Data Platform Architecture64 Streaming & Real-Time Data69 Data Governance & Semantics69 Frontend & Experience Architecture66 Edge, Mobile & IoT68 Regulatory & Data Protection Architecture65 Assurance, Audit & Model Risk64

Kind Any concept785 practice729 pattern362 metric125 case-study77 tool62 protocol45

23 terms shown.

Term	Kind	Topic	What it is
Artifact Signing	practice	Supply Chain Security	Cryptographically signing build outputs so that deployment can verify what is being run was produced by the expected pipeline from the expected source.
Break-Glass Access Emergency Access, Just-in-Time Elevation	practice	Identity & Access Management	A pre-agreed, heavily audited path to elevated privilege for emergencies, replacing standing administrative access.
Build Provenance Artefact Attestation, SLSA Provenance	practice	Supply Chain Security	A signed, verifiable statement of what was built, from which source, by which builder, with which dependencies - so a consumer can check that an artefact corresponds to reviewed source.
Compliance Framework SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS	practice	Security Architecture	A published set of control requirements an organisation is assessed against, which turns security posture into evidence somebody else will check.
Consent Management	practice	Privacy Engineering	Capturing, storing, honouring and evidencing a data subject's permissions for specific processing purposes, including withdrawal.
Continuous Compliance	practice	Compliance Frameworks	Producing compliance evidence automatically and continuously from the systems themselves, rather than reconstructing it before an audit.
Data Discovery	practice	Data Classification	Automatically scanning stores to find where sensitive data actually resides, as distinct from where the documentation says it should.
Data Key Caching Key Reuse Window, Envelope Key Caching	practice	Key Management	Reusing one generated data key across a bounded number of objects, bytes and seconds, so that envelope encryption does not make one key-service request per record.
Egress Filtering	practice	Network Security	Restricting what a workload may connect out to, which is the control that turns a compromise into a contained one.
Encryption at Rest and in Transit	practice	Security Architecture	Protecting stored data from disclosure if the medium is obtained, and network data from disclosure if the path is observed — two different controls against two different threats.
Key Rotation	practice	Key Management	Periodically replacing a cryptographic key with a new one while retaining the old for decrypting existing data, so exposure from any single key is bounded.
Multi-Factor Authentication MFA, 2FA	practice	Authentication	Requiring evidence from more than one category — something you know, have, or are — so a single stolen credential is insufficient.
OWASP Top Ten	practice	Security Architecture	A periodically updated consensus list of the most critical web application security risks, useful as a design-review checklist.
Privacy Engineering	practice	Privacy Engineering	Building systems whose privacy properties come from their structure rather than from policy documents.
Reachability Triage Exploitability Prioritisation, Vulnerability Relevance	practice	Supply Chain Security	Prioritising dependency vulnerabilities by whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable and exploitable in your application, rather than by severity score - which is what makes vulnerability manageme…
Secrets Management	practice	Security Architecture	Storing, distributing, rotating and auditing credentials so that they never live in code, images or configuration files.
Secure API Design	practice	Secure API Design	Building an interface where the safe path is the default and the unsafe one requires deliberate effort.
Security Incident Response	practice	Security Incident Response	Responding to a compromise — where the architecture determines whether you can detect it, contain it, and prove what happened.
STRIDE	practice	Threat Modelling	A mnemonic for six threat categories — spoofing, tampering, repudiation, information disclosure, denial of service, elevation of privilege — walked across each component and data flow.
Supply Chain Attestation SLSA, Provenance Attestation	practice	Supply Chain Security	A signed statement about how an artifact was produced — from which source, by which builder, with which inputs — verified before deployment.
Threat Modelling	practice	Security Architecture	A structured exercise that identifies what can go wrong with a design, before it is built, by walking the system's trust boundaries.
Token Audience Validation Audience Restriction, aud Claim	practice	Tokens & JWTs	Verifying that a signed token was issued for the service consuming it, without which a legitimately obtained low-privilege token is replayable against a high-privilege service.
Transactional Audit Emission Audit in the Same Transaction, Complete Audit Guarantee	practice	Auditability	Writing the audit record in the same transaction as the state change it describes, so that a crash cannot produce a change with no record - the property that distinguishes an audit trail from application logging.