UCF Glossary

W/P (Workpaper)

[GAO/PCIE Financial Audit Manual]

W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)

An international consortium founded in 1994 of affiliates from public and private organizations involved with the Internet and the web. The W3C’s primary mission is to promulgate open standards to further enhance the economic growth of Internet web services globally. See also http://www.w3.org for more information. [ISACA]

WAN (Wide Area Network)

A group of computers and other devices dispersed over a wide geographical area that are connected by communications links. [FISCAM, ISACA, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)]

WAP (Wireless Application Protocol)

A standard for providing cellular telephones, pagers, and other handheld devices with secure access to e-mail and text-based Web pages. [NIST 800 series]

WB (World Bank)

[de facto]

WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy)

A security protocol, designed to provide the same level of security as that of a wired LAN, for wireless local area networks defined in the 802.11b or 11g standard. Does not provide adequate security against intentional eavesdropping (for example, cryptanalysis). [Network Frontiers, PCI-DSS, NIST 800 Series]

WIP (Work In Progress)

A status that means activities have started but are not yet complete. It is commonly used as a status for incidents, problems, changes, etc. [ITIL]

WORM (Write-Once, Read-Many)

Data storage devices (e.g. CD-ROM’s) where the space on the discs can only be written once. The data is permanently stored. This is often today’s primary media for archival information. Common disk sizes run from 5.25” (1.3 gigabytes) to 12” (8 to 10 gigabytes) capacities. There is also a 14’” disk (13 to 15 gigabytes), only manufactured by Kodak’s optical storage group. WORMs can also be configured into jukeboxes. There are various technologies. The expected viable lifetime of a WORM is at least 50 years. Since it’s impossible to change, the government treats it just like paper or microfilm and it is accepted in litigation and other record-keeping applications. On the negative side, there is no current standard for how WORMs are written. The only ISO standard is for the 14” version, manufactured only by one vendor. A 5.25” standard is emerging from the European Computer Manufacturing Association but is not yet accepted. Further, WORM discs are written on both sides, but there are currently no drives that read both sides at the same time. As for speed, WORM is faster than tape or CD-ROM, but slower than magnetic. Typical disk access times run between 40 and 150 milliseconds (compared with 11 ms for fast magnetic discs and 300 ms for CD-ROM). Data transfer rates run between 1 and 2 MB/sec (compared with 5 to 10 for magnetic discs and 600KB/sec for CD-ROM). [Sedona Conference]

WPA (WiFi Protect Access)

Security protocol for wireless (WiFi) networks. Created in response to several serious weaknesses in the WEP protocol. [PCI-DSS]

WSDL (Web Services Description Language)

[ISACA]

WWW (World Wide Web)

A sub-network of the Internet through which information is exchanged by text, graphics, audio, and video. All of the computers on the Internet which use HTML-capable software (Netscape, Explorer, etc.) to exchange data. Data exchange on the WWW is characterized by easy-touse graphical interfaces, hypertext links, images, and sound. Today the WWW has become synonymous with the Internet, although technically it is really just one component. [ISACA, Sedona Conference]

WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get)

Display and software technology which shows on the computer screen exactly what will print. Often requires a large, high-density monitor. [Sedona Conference]