CRISC - Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control term definition - Part 5

Application development review

An evaluation of an application system under development that considers matters such as: appropriate controls are designed into the system; the application will process information in a complete, accurate and reliable manner; the application will function as intended; the application will function in compliance with any applicable statutory provisions; the system is developed in compliance with the established system development life cycle process.

Application implementation review

An evaluation of any part of an implementation project.

Application layer

In the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) communications model, the application layer provides services for an application program to ensure that effective communication with another application program in a network is possible. The application layer is not the application that is doing the communication; a service layer that provides these services.

Application maintenance review

An evaluation of any part of a project to perform maintenance on an application system. Examples include project management, test plans and user acceptance testing (UAT) procedures.

Application or managed service provider (ASP/MSP)

A third party that delivers and manages applications and computer services, including security services to multiple users via the Internet or a private network.

Application program

A program that processes business data through activities such as data entry, update or query. Contrasts with systems programs, such as an operating system or network control program, and with utility programs such as copy or sort

Application programming

The act or function of developing and maintaining application programs in production.

Application programming interface (API)

A set of routines, protocols and tools referred to as "building blocks" used in business application software development.A good API makes it easier to develop a program by providing all the building blocks related to functional characteristics of an operating system that applications need to specify, for example, when interfacing with the operating system (e.g., provided by Microsoft Windows, different versions of UNIX). A programmer utilizes these APIs in developing applications that can operate effectively and efficiently on the platform chosen.

Application proxy

A service that connects programs running on internal networks to services on exterior networks by creating two connections, one from the requesting client and another to the destination service.

Application security

Refers to the security aspects supported by the application, primarily with regard to the roles or responsibilities and audit trails within the applications

Bus configuration

All devices (nodes) are linked along one communication line where transmissions are received by all attached nodes

Business balanced scorecard

A tool for managing organizational strategy that uses weighted measures for the areas of financial performance (lag) indicators, internal operations, customer measurements, learning and growth (lead) indicators, combined to rate the enterprise.

Business case

Documentation of the rationale for making a business investment, used both to support a business decision on whether to proceed with the investment and as an operational tool to support management of the investment through its full economic life cycle

Business continuity plan (BCP)

A plan used by an enterprise to respond to disruption of critical business processes. Depends on the contingency plan for restoration of critical systems.

Business control

The policies, procedures, practices and organizational structures designed to provide reasonable assurance that the business objectives will be achieved and undesired events will be prevented or detected.

Business dependency assessment

A process of identifying resources critical to the operation of a business process.

Business function

An activity that an enterprise does, or needs to do, to achieve its objectives.

Business goal

The translation of the enterprise's mission from a statement of intention into performance targets and results.

Business impact

The net effect, positive or negative, on the achievement of business objectives.

Business impact analysis (BIA)

A process to determine the impact of losing the support of any resource.