CPM Dictionary: H

Hacker: Individual skilled in breaking or compromising security systems, computers, communications systems

Hacktivism: System penetration or corruption with a political or social intent

Half-life: Time in which the concentration of a substance (especially if radioactive) is reduced by 50%

Hand Crew: Predetermined individuals who are supervised, organized, and trained principally for clearing brush as a fire suppression measure

Handshaking Procedure: Dialogue between two entities (e.g., a user and a computer, a computer and another computer, or a program and another program) used to identify and authenticate the entities to one another

Hardcopy: Information or data in a fixed media, usually difficult to modify, and in human-readable form, such as paper printouts; typically preferred as evidence when presented in courts of law

Hardening: Identifying and fixing system vulnerabilities

Hardware Setup: Set of hardware parameters, such as modem type, port/device, and data rate, that is used as a singular named resource in launching a host or remote session

Hash: See also Digest

Hash Function: Algorithm that computes a value based on a data object (such as a message or file; usually variable-length; possibly very large), thereby mapping the data object to a smaller data object (the hash result) which is usually a fixed-size value; example – checksum; in security a cryptographic hash function makes it computationally infeasible to find either a) a data object that maps to a pre-specified hash result (the "one-way" property) or b) two data objects that map to the same hash result (the "collision-free" property)

Hash Result: Output of a hash function, also known as a hash value

Hazard (or Hazardous Phenomenon or Event): Source of potential harm or a situation with a potential to cause loss; a rare or extreme event in the natural or man-made environment that adversely affects human life, property or activity to the extent of causing disaster; can be natural or man-made

Hazard Assessment (also Hazard Analysis/Evaluation) Process of determining, for specific areas, the likelihood of the occurrence of potentially-damaging phenomenon of given magnitudes within a specified period of time; involves analysis of formal and informal historical records, plus skilled interpretation of existing topographical graphical, geological, geomorphological, hydrological, and land-use maps

Hazard Classification: Rating for an infrastructure element, such as a power system or dam, based on the potential for loss of life and damage to property that failure to the power system or dam could cause

Hazard Identification: Part of Hazard Identification, Capability Assessment and Multi-Year Development Plan (HICA/MYDP) information system which is completed or updated on an annual basis by State and local emergency management organizations; provides a method for indicating those hazards judged by local officials to pose a significant threat to their jurisdiction. See also Risk Assessment

Hazard Mapping: Establishing geographically where and to what extent particular phenomena are likely to pose a threat to people, property, infrastructure, and economic activities, typically using mapping techniques

Hazard Mitigation: Actions taken to reduce or eliminate the long-term risk to human life and property from hazards; can also mean cost-effective measures to reduce potential for damage to facilities from a disaster event (FEMA). See also Mitigation

Hazard or Threat Identification: Identifying situations or conditions that have potential to cause injury to people, damage to property, or damage to the environment

Hazard, Secondary: See also Secondary Hazard

Hazard Surveillance: Assessment of occurrence, distribution, and secular trends relating to different levels of hazards (e.g., toxic chemical agents, physical agents, biomechanical stressors, and biologic agents) that are responsible for disease and injury

Hazard Vulnerability Analysis: See also Hazard Identification/Analysis

Hazardous Material: Substance or material in a particular form or quantity which may pose an unreasonable risk to health, safety, and property; can include explosives, radioactive materials, etiologic agents, flammable liquids/solids, combustible liquids/solids, poisons, oxidizing or corrosive materials, and compressed agents

Hazardous Materials Incident (Stationary): Uncontrolled release of hazardous materials from a fixed site

Hazardous Materials Transportation Incident: Uncontrolled release of hazardous materials during transport

Hazardous Substances: Elements, compounds, or mixtures (other than oil), which, when discharged in any quantity onto land or into or upon navigable or coastal waters, present a imminent and substantial danger to the public health or welfare including fish, shellfish, wildlife, shorelines, and beaches; can include strong acids and bases, potentially toxic pesticides, or other bulk stored chemicals used in manufacturing processes or repair operations

Header: Extra information in a packet needed for the protocol stack to process the packet

Health: State of physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity (World Health Organization definition)

Health and Safety: Process by which the well being of employees, contractors, visitors and the public is safeguarded; business continuity planning efforts must incorporate H&S statutory and regulatory requirements and legislation

Health Behavior: Combination of knowledge, practices, and attitudes that together contribute to motivate actions taken regarding health

Health Care: Services provided to individuals or communities by agents of the health services or related professions to promote, maintain, monitor, or restore health; not limited to medical care, which implies therapeutic action by or under the supervision of a physician; can also include self-care

Health Services: Services performed by health care professionals, or by others under their direction, that promote, maintain, or restore health; can include health protection, health promotion, and disease prevention

Heavy Equipment Transport: Ground vehicles capable of transporting a bulldozer or other heavy equipment

Helibase: Primary location for parking, fueling, maintenance, and loading of helicopters operating in support of an incident; typically located at or near incident base headquarters Helicopter Accommodations: Access to either a helipad or another site (not specifically designated as a helipad) where a helicopter can land safely. See also Helibase, Heliport, Helispot

Heliport: Location where a helicopter can safely take off and land; can be used for loading of supplies, equipment, or personnel

Helispot: Location where a helicopter can safely take off and land; can be used for loading of supplies, equipment, or personnel

Helitack Crew: Contingent of 3 or more individuals who may be agency service personnel and equipment are temporarily located pending assignment, release, or reassignment

Help Desk: Common name for person or office in an organization where users are directed for technical support or assistance; personnel should receive basic security education and training

Herd Immunity: Resistance of a group or community to invasion and spread of an infectious agent, based on the resistance to infection of a high proportion of individual members of the group

Heuristics: Examination of program code for functions known to be associated with viral activity; similar to activity monitoring but without actually executing programs; alternatively, code is run under some type of emulation

Heuristic Scanner: Antiviral program which attempts to detect new or unknown viruses or malware by examining program code for functions known to be associated with viral or malicious activity

Hierarchy of Command: See also Chain of Command

High Availability: Systems or applications requiring a very high level of reliability and availability; typically operate 24x7 and usually require built-in redundancy to minimize risk of downtime due to hardware and/or telecommunication failures

High-Hazard Areas: Geographic locations determined through historical experience and vulnerability analysis to be likely to experience the effects of a specific hazard (e.g., hurricane, earthquake, hazardous materials accident, etc.) resulting in vast property damage and loss of life (FEMA)

High-Risk Areas: Heavily populated areas, particularly susceptible to high-intensity earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, or other disasters, for which emergency response may be necessary in the event of a disaster

High-Risk, High-Population Areas: Densely populated areas of the U.S. that are particularly susceptible to high-intensity earthquakes for which Federal emergency response may be necessary; designated areas include Honolulu, HI; San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, CA; Puget Sound, WA; Anchorage, AK; Salt Lake City, UT; the central U.S. (MO, KY, TN, MS, AR, IN, IL); Charleston, SC; Boston, MA; the State of New York; Puerto Rico; and the Virgin Islands

High-Tech Improvised Explosive Device: An containing an explosive or special filler designed to cause extensive death or destruction; may have complex or sophisticated design, including intricate arming or firing systems, including booby traps

Hijack Attack: Variant of active wiretapping in which attacker seizes control of a previously established communication association

Hijacking: Attack whereby an active, established, session is intercepted and used by the attacker

HLLW: Refers to a worm that is compiled using a High-Level Language

HMAC: Keyed hash (RFC 2104) that can be based on any iterated cryptographic hash; uses available cryptographic hash functions without modification to preserve the original performance of the selected hash without significant degradation, uses and handles keys in a simple way, has a well-understood cryptographic analysis of the strength of the mechanism based on reasonable assumptions about the underlying hash function, and enables easy replacement of hash functions in case a faster or stronger hash is found or required

Hoax: Joke, fraud, or other form of spoofing; in viruses, refers to a form of chain letter, carrying a false warning of a non-existent virus; characterized by lack of technical detail and valid contact information, references to false authorities, warnings of extreme damage that virus will cause

Honey pot: Programs that simulate one or more network services that can be designated on computer system ports; used to induce an attacker, who assumes you're running vulnerable services that can be used to break into the machine; can provide advanced warning of a more concerted attack. See also Entrapment

Hops: A hop is each exchange with a gateway a packet takes on its way to the destination

Hospital-Acquired Infection: See also Nosocomial Infection

Hospitals, Associate: See also Associate Hospitals

Hospitals, Participating: See also Participating Hospitals

Hospitals, POD Disaster: See also POD Disaster Hospitals

Hospitals, Resource: See also Resource Hospitals

Host: 1) Computer with full two-way access to other computers on the Internet; also a computer with a web server that serves the pages for one or more Web sites; 2) person or other living animal, including birds and insects, that affords subsistence or lodging to an infectious agent under natural conditions; in an epidemic, the host may be the population or group

Host-Based ID (Intrusion Detection): Systems that use information from operating system audit records to monitor all host operations upon which the intrusion detection software has been installed; results are compared with pre-defined security policy

Host-Based Security: Securing individual systems from attack; security capabilities are operating system and version dependent

Host to Front-End Protocol: Conventions that govern format and control of data that are passed from a host to a front-end machine

Hot Site: An alternate facility that already has in place the computer, telecommunications, and environmental infrastructure required to recover critical business functions or information systems; a site (data center, work area) that provides a BCM facility with the appropriate work area recovery, telecommunications and IT interfaces and environmentally controlled space capable of providing backup data processing support to maintain the firm’s key business processes. See also Warm Site, Cold Site, Alternate Site

Hot Standby: Generally used in technology recovery, and provides an alternate means of processing that minimizes information processing downtime; includes standby systems and/or sites that are directly linked to business and government users and can record transactions in tandem with the primary system

Household: One or more persons who occupy a dwelling, i.e., a place that provides shelter, cooking, washing, and sleeping facilities; may or may not be a family; also describes the dwelling unit in which the persons live

Housekeeping: The process of maintaining processes, systems, people and plans in a state of readiness

HTTP Proxy: Specialized server that functions as a middleman in communications between HTTP clients and servers

HTTPS: Denotes the use of HTTP enhanced by a security mechanism, usually SSL

Hub: Network device that passes through data it receives on one port to all the other ports on the unit; data initiated from one host can be retransmitted to all other hosts supported by the hub

Human-Made Disasters: Emergency situations where primary, direct cause(s) are specific human actions, deliberate or otherwise; involves situations where civilian populations suffer casualties, losses of property, basic services and means of livelihood as a result of war or civil strife; these can be rapid or slow onset types, and in the case of internal conflict, can lead to "complex emergencies"

Human-Made Hazard: Condition which may have a disastrous impact on a society, based on technological processes, human interactions with the environment, or relationships within and between communities

Human Resources: Internal department that deals with personnel issues. See also Personnel Department

Human Resource Disaster Recovery: Strategies for dealing with risk assessment, prevention, control and business recovery for both critical (key) and non-critical (non key) personnel

Human Threats: Potential operational disruptions resulting from human actions. (i.e., disgruntled employee, terrorism, blackmail, job actions, riots)

Hurricane: Tropical cyclone, formed in the atmosphere over warm ocean areas where wind speeds reach 74 miles per hour or more, and blow in a large spiral around a relatively calm area or "eye"; rotation is counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere; severity defined by categories: a) Category I: winds 74 to 95 mph, b) Category II: winds 96 to 110 mph, c) Category III: winds 111 to 130 mph, d) Category IV: winds 131 to 155 mph, and e) Category V: winds over 155 mph

Hurricane Warning: Alerts issued when hurricane conditions are expected in a specific coastal area within 24 hours or less

Hurricane Watch: Alerts issued for coastal areas when tropical storm or hurricane conditions threaten within 24-36 hours

Hybrid Attack: Builds on dictionary attack method by adding numerals and symbols to dictionary words

Hybrid Encryption: Application of cryptography that combines two or more encryption algorithms, particularly a combination of symmetric and asymmetric encryption

Hygiene: Principles and laws governing the preservation of health and their practical application; also, practices conducive to good health

Hyperlink: Based on high-speed network communications, an information object (such as a word, a phrase, or an image; usually highlighted by color or underscoring) that points (indicates how to connect) to related information that is located elsewhere and can be retrieved by activating the link

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML): Markup symbols or codes inserted in a file intended for display on a World Wide Web browser page

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP): Rules found in the Internet Protocol (IP) family for transporting hypertext documents across an internet

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS): Variation of HTTP that has a security mechanism, typically using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol

Hypocenter: Focal point within the earth of the center of an earthquake and the origin of its elastic waves

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