The Sedona Conference® Glossary, 3rd Edition, Copyright © 2010, Reprinted with permission.
Paas: (Platform as a Service) A form of Cloud Computing which describes the outsourcing of the computer platform upon which development and other workflows can be performed without the costs of hardware, software and personnel. See Cloud Computing.
PAB (Personal Address Book): A Microsoft® Outlook list of contacts created and maintained by an individual user for personal use.
PackBits: A compression scheme that originated with the Macintosh®. Suitable only for black and white.
Packet: A unit of data sent across a network that may contain identity and routing information. When a large block of data is to be sent over a network, it is broken up into several packets, sent, and then reassembled at the other end. The exact layout of an individual packet is determined by the protocol being used.
Page File/Paging File: A method to temporarily store data outside of the main memory, but quickly retrievable. This information is left in the swap file after the programs are terminated, and may be retrieved using forensic techniques. Also referred to as a swap file.
Parallel Port: See Port.
Parent: See Document.
Parsing: Transforms input text into a data structure suitable for later processing, while capturing the implied hierarchy of the input. Data may be parsed from one source of ESI to another.
Partition: An individual section of computer storage media such as a hard drive. For example, a single hard drive may be divided into several partitions. When a hard drive is divided into partitions, each partition is designated by a separate drive letter, i.e., C, D, etc.
Partition Table: Indicates each logical volume contained on a disk and its location.
Partition Waste Space: After the boot sector of each volume or partition is written to a track, it is customary for the system to skip the rest of that track and begin the actual useable area of the volume on the next track. This results in unused or “wasted” space on that track where information can be hidden. This “wasted space” can only be viewed with a low level disk viewer. However, forensic techniques can be used to search these “wasted space” areas for hidden information.
Password: A secret code utilized, usually along with a user ID, in order to log on or gain access to a PC, network or other secure system, site, or application.
Path: (1) The hierarchical description of where a directory, folder, or file is located on a computer or network; (2) Also used to refer to a transmission channel, the path between two nodes of a network that a data communication follows, and the physical cabling that connects the nodes on a network.
Pattern Matching: A generic term that describes any process that compares one file’s content with another file’s content.
Pattern Recognition: Technology that searches ESI for like patterns and flags, and extracts the pertinent data, usually utilizing an algorithm. For instance, in looking for addresses, alpha characters followed by a comma and a space, followed by two capital alpha characters, followed by a space, followed by five or more digits, are
usually the city, state, and zip code. By programming the application to look for a pattern, the information can be electronically identified, extracted, or otherwise utilized or manipulated.
PCI: Peripheral Component Interconnect (Interface). A high-speed interconnect local bus used to support multimedia devices.
PCMCIA: (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association) Plug-in cards for computers (usually portables) that extend the storage and/or functionality.
PDA (Personal Digital Assistant): A small, usually hand-held, computer used to perform communication and organizational tasks remotely.
PDF (Portable Document Format): A file format technology developed by Adobe Systems to facilitate the exchange of documents between platforms regardless of originating application by preserving the format and content.
Peer to Peer or P2P: A form of network organization that uses portions of each users resources, like storage space or processing power, for use by others on the network. Notorious examples include the storage sharing of Napster or Bittorrent.
Peripheral: Any accessory device attached to a computer, such as a disk drive, printer, modem, or joystick.
Personal Computer (PC): Computer based on a microprocessor and designed to be used by one person at a time.
Personal Data (as used in the EU Data Protection Act): Data which relate to a natural person who can be identified from those Data, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identification number or to one or more factors specific to his or her physical, physiological, mental, economic, cultural, or social identity. Also referred to as PII (Personally Identifiable Information).
Petabyte (PB): –1,024 terabytes (approximately one million gigabytes). See Byte.
PFC (Personal Filing Cabinet): The AOL proprietary email storage container file used for the local storage of emails, contacts, calendar events, and other personal information.
Phase Change: A method of storing information on rewritable optical disks.
Physical Disk: An actual piece of computer media, such as the hard disk or drive, floppy disks, CD-ROM
disks, Zip disks, etc.
Physical File Space: When a file is created on a computer, a sufficient number of clusters (physical file space) are assigned to contain the file. If the file (logical file space) is not large enough to completely fill the assigned clusters (physical file space) then some unused space will exist within the physical file space. This unused space is referred to as file slack and can contain unused space, previously deleted/overwritten files or fragments thereof.
Physical Unitization: See Unitization – Physical and Logical.
PICA: One sixth (1/6) of an inch. Used to measure graphics/fonts. There are 12 points per pica; 6 picas per inch; 72 points per inch.
Picture Element: The smallest addressable unit on a display screen. The higher the resolution (the more rows of columns), the more information can be displayed.
PII (Personally Identifiable Information): See Personal Data.
Ping: Executable command, used as a test for checking network connectivity.
Pitch: Characters (or dots) per inch, measured horizontally.
PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) Digital Signature: A system, including hardware, software and policies, designed to manage digital certificates and match those certificates to specific users so that data can be validated as authentic. See Certificate, Digital Certificate, and Digital Signature.
Plaintext: The least formatted and therefore most portable form of text for computerized documents.
Plasma Display: A type of flat panel display commonly use for large televisions in which many tiny cells are located between two panels of glass holding an inert mixture of gases that are then electronically charged to produce light.
Platter: One of several components that make up a computer hard drive. Platters are thin, rapidly rotating disks that have a set of read/write heads on both sides of each platter. Each platter is divided into a series of concentric rings called tracks. Each track is further divided into sections called sectors, and each sector is
|sub-divided into bytes.
Plug and Play (“PNP”): A method by which new hardware may be detected, configured, and used by existing systems upon connection with little or no user intervention.
PMS (Pantone Matching System): A color standard in printing.
POD (Print On Demand): Document images are stored in electronic format and are available to be quickly printed.
Pointer: An index entry in the directory of a disk (or other storage medium) that identifies the space on the disk in which an electronic document or piece of electronic data resides, thereby preventing that space from being overwritten by other data. In most cases, when an electronic document is “deleted,” the pointer is deleted, that allows the document to be overwritten, but the document is not actually erased.
Port: An interface between a computer and other computers or devices, that can be divided into two primary groups based on signal transfer: serial ports send and receive one bit at a time via a single wire pair, while parallel ports send multiple bits at the same time over several sets of wires. See also USB Port. Software ports are virtual data connections used by programs to exchange data directly instead of going through a file or other temporary storage locations; the most common types are TCP and UDP.
Portable Volumes: A feature that facilitates the moving of large volumes of documents without requiring copying multiple files. Portable volumes enable individual CDs to be easily regrouped, detached and reattached to different databases for a broader information exchange.
Portrait Mode: A page orientation or display such that the height exceeds the width (vertical).
Preservation: The process of retaining documents and ESI, including document metadata, for legal purposes and should include suspension of normal document destruction policies and procedures. See also Spoliation.
Preservation Notice, Preservation Order: See Legal Hold.
Printout: Printed data, also known as hard copy.
Private Network: A network that is connected to the Internet but is isolated from the Internet with security measures allowing use of the network only by persons within the private network.
Privilege Data Set: The universe of documents identified as responsive and/or relevant, but withheld from production on the grounds of legal privilege, a log of which is usually required to notify of withheld documents and the grounds on which they were withheld (e.g., work product, attorney-client privilege).
Process/Processing (as used in the EU Data Protection Act): Any operation or set of operations which is performed upon Personal Data, whether or not by automatic means, such as collection, recording, organization, storage, adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, blocking, erasure, or destruction.
Processing Data: An automated computer workflow where native data is ingested by any number of software programs designed to extract text and selected metadata and then normalize the data for packaging into a format for the eventual loading into a review platform. May also entail identification of duplicates/de- duplication and rendering of data into delimited format.
Production: The process of delivering to another party, or making available for that party’s review, documents and/or ESI deemed responsive to a discovery request.
Production Data Set: The universe of documents and/or ESI identified as responsive to document requests and not withheld on the grounds of attorney-client, work product, or other privilege.
Production Number: Often referred to as the “Bates” Number. A sequential number assigned to every page of a production for fixed image production formats, or to every file in a native file production, used for tracking and reference purposes. Often used in conjunction with a suffix or prefix to identify the producing party, the litigation, or other relevant information. See also Bates Number.
Program: See Application and Software.
Properties: File level metadata describing attributes of the physical file, i.e., size, creation data, and author. See Metadata.
Protocol: Defines a common series of rules, signals, and conventions that allow different kinds of computers and applications to communicate over a network. One of the most common protocols for networks is called TCP/IP.
Protodigital: Primitive or first-generation digital. Applied as an adjective to systems, software, “documents,” or ways of thinking. The term was first used in music to refer to early computer synthesizers that attempted to mimic the sound of traditional musical instruments, and to early jazz compositions written on computers with that instrumentation in mind. In electronic discovery, this term is most often applied to systems or ways of thinking that — on the surface — appear to embrace digital technology, but attempt to equate ESI to paper records, ignoring the unique attributes of ESI. When someone says, “What’s the big deal with e-discovery? Sure we have a lot of email. You just print it all out and produce it like you used to,” that is an example of protodigital thinking. When someone says, “We embrace electronic discovery. We scan everything to .PDF before we produce it,” that person is engaged in protodigital thinking — attempting to fit ESI into the paper discovery pardigm.
Proximity Search: A search performed to find two or more words within a specified distance from each other PST: A Microsoft® Outlook email storage file containing archived email messages in a compressed format. Public Network: A network that is part of the public Internet.
