1.1 Glossary

This document uses the following terms:

Active Directory: The Windows implementation of a general-purpose directory service, which uses LDAP as its primary access protocol. Active Directory stores information about a variety of objects in the network such as user accounts, computer accounts, groups, and all related credential information used by Kerberos [MS-KILE]. Active Directory is either deployed as Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) or Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS), which are both described in [MS-ADOD]: Active Directory Protocols Overview.

administrative template: A file associated with a Group Policy Object (GPO) that combines information on the syntax of registry-based policy settings with human-readable descriptions of the settings, as well as other information.

Advanced Encryption Standard (AES): A block cipher that supersedes the Data Encryption Standard (DES). AES can be used to protect electronic data. The AES algorithm can be used to encrypt (encipher) and decrypt (decipher) information. Encryption converts data to an unintelligible form called ciphertext; decrypting the ciphertext converts the data back into its original form, called plaintext. AES is used in symmetric-key cryptography, meaning that the same key is used for the encryption and decryption operations. It is also a block cipher, meaning that it operates on fixed-size blocks of plaintext and ciphertext, and requires the size of the plaintext as well as the ciphertext to be an exact multiple of this block size. AES is also known as the Rijndael symmetric encryption algorithm [FIPS197].

certification authority (CA): A third party that issues public key certificates. Certificates serve to bind public keys to a user identity. Each user and certification authority (CA) can decide whether to trust another user or CA for a specific purpose, and whether this trust should be transitive. For more information, see [RFC3280].

client: A client, also called a client computer, is a computer that receives and applies settings of a Group Policy Object (GPO), as specified in [MS-GPOL].

client computer: A computer that receives and applies settings from a Group Policy Object (GPO), as specified in [MS-GPOL].

client-side extension GUID (CSE GUID): A GUID  that enables a specific client-side extension on the Group Policy client to be associated with policy data that is stored in the logical and physical components of a Group Policy Object (GPO) on the Group Policy server, for that particular extension.

Data Encryption Standard (DES): A specification for encryption of computer data that uses a 56-bit key developed by IBM and adopted by the U.S. government as a standard in 1976. For more information see [FIPS46-3].

DirectAccess: A collection of different component policies, including Name Resolution Policy and IPsec, which allows seamless connectivity to corporate resources when not physically connected to the corporate network.

domain: A set of users and computers sharing a common namespace and management infrastructure. At least one computer member of the set must act as a domain controller (DC) and host a member list that identifies all members of the domain, as well as optionally hosting the Active Directory service. The domain controller provides authentication of members, creating a unit of trust for its members. Each domain has an identifier that is shared among its members. For more information, see [MS-AUTHSOD] section 1.1.1.5 and [MS-ADTS].

Domain Name System (DNS): A hierarchical, distributed database that contains mappings of domain names to various types of data, such as IP addresses. DNS enables the location of computers and services by user-friendly names, and it also enables the discovery of other information stored in the database.

fully qualified domain name (FQDN): An unambiguous domain name that gives an absolute location in the Domain Name System's (DNS) hierarchy tree, as defined in [RFC1035] section 3.1 and [RFC2181] section 11.

globally unique identifier (GUID): A term used interchangeably with universally unique identifier (UUID) in Microsoft protocol technical documents (TDs). Interchanging the usage of these terms does not imply or require a specific algorithm or mechanism to generate the value. Specifically, the use of this term does not imply or require that the algorithms described in [RFC4122] or [C706] must be used for generating the GUID. See also universally unique identifier (UUID).

Group Policy Object (GPO): A collection of administrator-defined specifications of the policy settings that can be applied to groups of computers in a domain. Each GPO includes two elements: an object that resides in the Active Directory for the domain, and a corresponding file system subdirectory that resides on the sysvol DFS share of the Group Policy server for the domain.

IPv4 address in string format: A string representation of an IPv4 address in dotted-decimal notation, as described in [RFC1123] section 2.1.

IPv6 address in string format: A string representation of an IPv6 address, as described in [RFC4291] section 2.2.

Name Resolution Policy: Policy settings that control how client name resolution is performed for a given DNS domain or hostname.

Name Resolution Policy Table (NRPT): The collection of Name Resolution Policy settings that apply to a given client.

NetBIOS: A particular network transport that is part of the LAN Manager protocol suite. NetBIOS uses a broadcast communication style that was applicable to early segmented local area networks. A protocol family including name resolution, datagram, and connection services. For more information, see [RFC1001] and [RFC1002].

policy setting: A statement of the possible behaviors of an element of a domain member computer's behavior that can be configured by an administrator.

Punycode: An ASCII Compatible Encoding syntax that transforms strings containing Unicode characters into strings consisting of a limited set of ASCII characters allowable for DNS. Used to transform internationalized domain names. For more details, see [RFC3492].

registry: A local system-defined database in which applications and system components store and retrieve configuration data. It is a hierarchical data store with lightly typed elements that are logically stored in tree format. Applications use the registry API to retrieve, modify, or delete registry data. The data stored in the registry varies according to the version of the operating system.

registry policy file: A file associated with a Group Policy Object (GPO) that contains a set of registry-based policy settings.

tool extension GUID or administrative plug-in GUID: A GUID defined separately for each of the user policy settings and computer policy settings that associates a specific administrative tool plug-in with a set of policy settings that can be stored in a Group Policy Object (GPO).

Unicode: A character encoding standard developed by the Unicode Consortium that represents almost all of the written languages of the world. The Unicode standard [UNICODE5.0.0/2007] provides three forms (UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32) and seven schemes (UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-16 BE, UTF-16 LE, UTF-32, UTF-32 LE, and UTF-32 BE).

MAY, SHOULD, MUST, SHOULD NOT, MUST NOT: These terms (in all caps) are used as defined in [RFC2119]. All statements of optional behavior use either MAY, SHOULD, or SHOULD NOT.