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EnaGuard Glossary: an open reference book with alphabetical tabs from A to H and a magnifying glass resting over one entry, symbolizing a shared vocabulary for AI architecture conversations.
GLOSSARY

Core concepts, in plain terms

Conversations about AI architecture in the boardroom often stall on a shared vocabulary gap. This glossary explains the core concepts used across the guide and the site, not engineering jargon, but the minimum concept set executives need to ask the right questions.

Core Concepts

LLM (Large Language Model)

An AI model trained on large volumes of text that can generate natural-language responses. It is often the starting point of enterprise AI architecture, but on its own it does not represent enterprise capacity.

Generative AI

A category of AI systems that produce new text, images, audio, or code; unlike classic prediction/classification models, they generate probabilistic, creative output.

Foundation Model

A large-scale model trained on broad, general-purpose data and adaptable to many tasks; most enterprise applications either use these models directly or customize them.

AI Agent

An AI component that can interpret a goal, break it into sub-steps, query enterprise data sources, call tools, and complete transactions under defined conditions. → Who It's For / What Is EnaGuard

Agentic System

An architecture in which multiple agents share tasks and information to work together; it creates more complex coordination and authorization requirements than a single-agent model.

Multimodal System

An AI system that processes text, image, audio, video, and sensor data within the same workflow; each data type carries different storage, privacy, and security requirements.

Small & Domain-Specific Model

Unlike large general-purpose models, a smaller model trained or adapted to produce faster, more economical, and more consistent results in a specific task or domain.

Fine-tuning

The process of further training a foundation model to adapt it to a specific task or an organization's own data set.

Quantization

An optimization technique that reduces a model's numeric precision so it can run with fewer resources and lower latency.

Edge AI

An AI model that runs close to where data is generated (field equipment, a production line, a vehicle, a store); it arises from the need for low latency and offline operation.

Synthetic Data

Artificially generated data that carries statistical properties similar to real data; it can be used for model training or testing where sensitive-data constraints apply.

Architecture & System Components

RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)

An architectural approach that lets a model retrieve and use relevant information from enterprise sources when generating a response. → What Is EnaGuard

Embedding / Vector Database

A database that turns text into numeric vectors and performs semantic similarity search across them; a core component of RAG systems.

Re-ranking

Re-ordering the candidates returned by an initial search using a stronger model; it directly affects RAG answer quality.

Chunking

The process of splitting a document into smaller, meaningful pieces before indexing; chunking quality affects search accuracy.

AI Gateway

A layer between applications and model services that centralizes access, routing, policy enforcement, cost control, and logging. → What Is EnaGuard

Model Routing

Directing a request to the most suitable model based on use case, data class, latency target, or cost limit.

MCP (Model Context Protocol)

An integration protocol that lets models and agents connect to data sources and tools through a common method.

LLMOps

The discipline of managing models, prompts, data sets, and configurations in a traceable way across the development, testing, release, and production lifecycle.

Identity, Authorization & Agent Control

Least Privilege

The principle that an agent or user should hold only the data and transaction rights required for its task.

Service Account

The digital identity an agent or system component uses to access enterprise resources; each agent should ideally hold a separate, traceable service account.

Short-Lived Credential

Access credentials valid for a limited time and renewed automatically, instead of long-lived passwords or keys; this limits the impact of a leak.

HITL (Human in the Loop)

A design principle requiring human approval for actions that cross a defined risk threshold.

Kill Switch

A mechanism that quickly stops an agent and revokes its access when unexpected behavior, an authorization breach, or a faulty decision chain is detected.

Resilience & Operations

Circuit Breaker

A resilience pattern that temporarily cuts calls to a failing dependency to prevent the fault from cascading through the system.

Fallback

A design that lets a service continue via a secondary model, a limited function, or a manual process when the primary model or provider is unavailable.

Retry

Controlled re-attempting of a request after a transient error; because uncontrolled retries can amplify a problem, it requires a centralized, bounded policy.

Security & Threat Glossary

Prompt Injection (Direct / Indirect)

An attempt to hijack model behavior via instructions embedded in user input or processed content such as a document, web page, email, or tool output.

Guardrail

A protection layer that checks a model's inputs and outputs against acceptable behavior boundaries.

Red Teaming

Independent adversarial testing that uncovers weaknesses in a system before a real attacker does.

Data Poisoning / Model Poisoning

Deliberately manipulating training data, fine-tuning data, or RAG sources to corrupt model behavior.

Adversarial ML

The field of attack and defense that uses inputs specifically crafted to mislead a model's decision mechanism.

Model Extraction / Model Inversion

Copying a model's behavior from its outputs (extraction), or inferring information about its training data (inversion); both carry intellectual-property and privacy risk.

Shadow AI

Employees using third-party AI tools without the organization's knowledge or approval; it can make corporate data flows invisible to the organization.

PII (Personally Identifiable Information)

Data that can directly or indirectly identify a person (such as a name, national ID, or email); it requires special protection under KVKK and GDPR.

Evidence & Maturity Language

Declared

A capability that the team simply states exists; supporting evidence is still limited.

Designed

The architecture, policy, procedure, or standard has been defined; it may not yet be implemented in production.

Implemented

The relevant technology or control has been deployed and configured.

Tested

The capability has been validated under normal, load, failure, and attack scenarios.

Proven

A capability level backed by production logs, metrics, test records, and incident data, monitored and improved on an ongoing basis.

Production Readiness

Not merely that an AI system runs, but that it can be operated safely, scalably, and sustainably under real production conditions.

Independent AI Architecture Verification

The verification of an organization's declared AI architecture capabilities, with evidence, by an independent party free of conflicts of interest. → What Is EnaGuard

Invisible Risk

A control is declared to exist, but its scope, ownership, production linkage, or test status is unclear, so the real state stays invisible.

Verification View

An evidence-based view of maturity, evidence confidence, scope coverage, residual risk, QA outcome, and claim boundary; not a single score.

Independent QA Review

When the person submitting evidence and the person who would review it are the same, a separate reviewer must sign off before that evidence counts; without it, confidence in the result is reduced.

Governance, Compliance & Standards

ISO/IEC 42001

An international standard for an AI Management System (AIMS); it aims to help organizations manage AI risks systematically.

ISO/IEC 23894

An international standard on AI risk management.

NIST AI Risk Management Framework

A voluntary AI risk-management framework from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, built around the Govern / Map / Measure / Manage functions.

OWASP GenAI Security Project

An open-source, globally contributed security research initiative focused on the security risks of LLM- and agent-based systems.

MITRE ATLAS

A continuously updated knowledge base compiling real-world attack tactics and techniques against AI systems.

CSA AI Controls Matrix

A cloud and security control framework for AI systems developed by the Cloud Security Alliance.

EU AI Act

The European Union's risk-based AI regulation; it imposes heavier obligations on high-risk systems.

KVKK / GDPR

Türkiye's and the European Union's core personal-data-protection regulations; they directly shape how AI systems may process data.

Data Residency

The country or region where data is processed and stored; an architectural parameter that directly shapes regulatory, latency, and security decisions.

Deployment Models

Cloud-First

A deployment model in which AI workloads run primarily on cloud platforms, under relatively flexible regulatory/data constraints.

Hybrid

A deployment model in which some workloads run in the cloud and others on internal infrastructure, under restricted cloud usage.

Air-Gapped

A deployment model fully isolated from external networks, typically chosen for high-confidentiality or critical-infrastructure requirements.

On-Premise

A deployment model in which AI infrastructure is hosted in the organization's own data center.

Want the full picture, with the risks and questions behind each term? The Executive Guide walks through all of it.