PaaS

Short for “Platform as a Service.” PaaS is a form of cloud computing in which a provider delivers hardware and software tools on its own infrastructure to users over the internet.

PCI DSS

Short for the Payment Card Industry’s Data Security Standard. It was created by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council to increase controls over sensitive cardholder data and reduce fraud. It applies to any organization that processes credit or debit cards.

PeSIT

An open file transfer protocol which allows the writing and reading of files between one computer and another; using a connection established over a telecommunications link (specialized connection, public network, local area network).

PGP

Short for Pretty Good Privacy. PGP is an encryption program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. 

PHI

Short for Protected Health Information. Under U.S. law, this is any information about health status, provision of health care, or payment for health care that is created or collected and can be associated with a specific individual. 

PII

Short for Personally Identifiable Information. Any information relating to identifying a person. Also known as Sensitive Personal Information (SPI).

PIPEDA

PIPEDA, short for the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, is a privacy law that applies to private-sector organizations and businesses throughout Canada.

PKI

Short for Public Key Infrastructure. It is a set of roles, policies, hardware, software and procedures needed to create, manage, distribute, use, store and revoke digital certificates and manage public-key encryption.

Plaintext

Text that is not computationally tagged, specially formatted, or written in code. 

POP3

Stands for Post Office Protocol. It is a protocol for receiving email by downloading it to your computer from a mailbox on the server of an Internet service provider.

PostgreSQL

Also known as Postgres, PostgreSQL is a free and open-source relational database management system the emphasizes on extensibility and technical standards compliance. It is a fully managed database as a service offering that can handle mission-critical workloads with predictable performance, security, high availability, and dynamic scalability. 

Private Key

A private key is a small amount of code that is paired with a public key to set off algorithms for text encryption, along with decryption. It is created during asymmetric-key encryption and is then used to decrypt and transform a message to a readable format. A private key is also known as a secret key.

Proxy Server

A server (computer system or application) that acts an intermediary for request from clients seeking resources from other servers. It intercepts all requests to the real server to see if it can fulfill the requests itself.   

Public Key

A public key is created in public key encryption cryptography that uses asymmetric-key encryption algorithms. Public keys are used to convert a message into an unreadable format. Decryption is carried out using a different, but matching, private key. Public and private keys are paired to enable secure communication.