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Terminology

384 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 areas384 Architecture Fundamentals16 Distributed Systems73 Data Architecture71 Cloud Architecture17 Networking13 API & Integration Architecture17 Reliability & Resilience16 Observability14 Performance & Capacity Engineering13 Security Architecture18 Cost Architecture & FinOps12 Business Architecture9 Architecture Communication8 Enterprise Architecture8 Legacy Modernization11 AI-Era Architecture15 Software Architecture & Engineering19 Architecture Patterns15 Architecture Decision-Making11 The Architect's Meta-Skills8
Kind Any concept136 practice90 pattern81 case-study26 protocol19 tool19 metric13

18 terms shown.

Term Kind Topic What it is
Auditability concept Security Architecture The ability to reconstruct who did what, to which resource, when, and from where — reliably enough to be relied upon after the fact.
Authentication AuthN concept Security Architecture Establishing who a principal is, to a defined level of confidence.
Authorization AuthZ concept Security Architecture Deciding whether an authenticated principal may perform a specific action on a specific resource.
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.
Data Residency Data Sovereignty concept Security Architecture A requirement that specific data be stored and sometimes processed only within a defined geography.
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.
Identity and Access Management IAM concept Security Architecture The system of record for principals, credentials and permissions, and the policy engine that decides what each principal may do.
JSON Web Token JWT protocol Security Architecture A signed, self-contained token carrying claims, which a service can validate locally without calling the issuer.
Least Privilege concept Security Architecture Granting each identity only the permissions it needs, for only as long as it needs them.
OAuth 2.0 protocol Security Architecture An authorisation framework that lets an application obtain scoped, delegated access to a resource without handling the user's credentials.
OpenID Connect OIDC protocol Security Architecture An identity layer over OAuth 2.0 that adds a signed ID token asserting who the user is and how they authenticated.
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.
Personally Identifiable Information PII, Personal Data concept Security Architecture Data relating to an identifiable person — a category far broader than name and address, and the trigger for most regulatory obligation.
Privacy by Design practice Security Architecture Building privacy protections into a system's structure from the start, rather than adding controls to a design that already collects and keeps everything.
Secrets Management practice Security Architecture Storing, distributing, rotating and auditing credentials so that they never live in code, images or configuration files.
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.
Tokenisation pattern Security Architecture Replacing a sensitive value with a non-sensitive surrogate, with the mapping held in one tightly-controlled vault.
Zero Trust concept Security Architecture A security model that grants no implicit trust from network position, and authenticates and authorises every request individually.