Glossary

AES: Advanced Encryption Standard.
BAA: Business Associate Agreement (BAA). A contract between a HIPAA covered entity and a HIPAA business associate (BA). The contract protects personal health information (PHI) in accordance with HIPAA guidelines. Source.
Bandwidth: A measure of the rate at which information can be moved. Typically expressed in Mbps or Megabits per second.
Channel: In the Cloak Labs architecture, a combination of two endpoints, a protocol, and defined actions to be taken.
Security Gateway: In the Cloak Labs architecture, the application that runs on-premises and is responsible for encryption/decryption, reliable data transfers, and executing actions on data pre/post transmission.
Customer Portal: In the Cloak Labs architecture, a website that allows you to track messages.
DICOM: The Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) standard for distributing and viewing any kind of medical image.
Digital Signature: A cryptographic method for proving the authenticity of a message, knowing with certainty who sent it and that it hasn’t been tampered with.
EC2: Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud
ESB: Enterprise Service Bus. A software architecture model used for designing and implementing communication between mutually interacting software applications.
End-to-End encryption (E2EE): Encryption of a message between two endpoints such that no one in the middle can read it. This differs from link encryption where one or more links in the path between the two endpoints might be encrypted, possibly leaving gaps where data can exist in the clear (unencrypted).
Firewall: Network software and/or hardware which controls access to a network.
Hash: A transformation of a sequence of bytes (for example a message or file) that is typically designed to return a unique short sequence. Computing the hash of a file can be used to verify that the file has not been changed since even a one byte change will change the hash value.
HIE: Health Information Exchange: a secure method of sharing vital patient information electronically. Cloud Labs as applied to healthcare data is technically an HIE.
HIPAA: The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. Title II of HIPAA, known as the Administrative Simplification (AS) provisions, requires the establishment of national standards for electronic health care transactions and national identifiers for providers, health insurance plans, and employers.
HL7: Health Level 7. A standard data format and protocol for exchanging health information. HL7 messages contain protected health information (PHI) and in the US must by law (HIPAA) be encrypted in transit and at rest.
Latency: A measure of time delay in moving information across a network. Information can theoretically not travel faster than the speed of light but in practice is somewhat slower.
Meaningful Use: The Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs provide financial incentives for the “meaningful use” of certified EHR technology to improve patient care. To receive an EHR incentive payment, providers have to show that they are “meaningfully using” their EHRs by meeting thresholds for a number of objectives. CMS has established the objectives for “meaningful use” that eligible professionals, eligible hospitals, and critical access hospitals (CAHs) must meet in order to receive an incentive payment. Citation
Message Router: In the Cloak Labs architecture, an application in the cloud that helps route messages to their ultimate destination. Since Cloak Labs messages are fully encrypted the routers have no access to their content.
Multicast: Sending the same message or data to multiple recipients.
Multi-Path Delivery: In the Cloak Labs architecture, sending a message along redundant paths in order to guarantee delivery.
Non-Repudiation: Being able to prove that a message was delivered. Particularly important for the transmission of financial or billing information.
PCI DSS: Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. The information security standard for organizations that handle cardholder information for the major debit, credit, prepaid, e-purse, ATM, and POS cards.
PHI: Protected Health Information. Interchangeably referred to as Personal Health Information.
PKI: Public Key Infrastructure: a set of hardware, software, people, policies, and procedures needed to create, manage, distribute, use, store, and revoke digital certificates.
Private Key: The key that is never shared with anyone else. This key is used to decrypt an incoming message as well as to sign an outgoing message.
Public Key: The key assigned to an endpoint that can be publicly shared. It is used by other endpoints to encrypt messages as well as to validate the authenticity of senders.
RSA: A cryptosystem for public key encryption.
SSL: Secure Sockets Layer. A cryptographic protocol that allows two computers to communicate without sharing any secret (or key) beforehand.
TLS: Transport Layer Security. The cryptographic protocol that is replacing SSL.
VPN: Virtual Private Network.
X12: The standard for the development and maintenance of Electronic Data Interchange standards for the United States.