(pl. )
of Ai
1. An
assembly of
computer hardware,
software,
firmware, or any combination of these, configured to accomplish specific
information-handling operations, such as communication, computation, dissemination, processing, and
storage of information. 2. [In INFOSEC,] any equipment or interconnected
system or subsystems of equipment that is used in the automatic
acquisition, storage, manipulation, management, movement, control, display,
switching, interchange,
transmission or reception of
data and includes computer software, firmware, and hardware. Note: Included are computers,
word processing systems, networks, or other electronic information handling systems, and associated equipment. [
NIS]