(adj., obscure) describes a signal or information received outside of the mechanisms used in standard operations; derives from the concept in telecommunications or networking in which a separate channel is reserved for relaying special messages outside of the core data stream; receiving an out-of-band message can be a means of alerting someone to a significant issue that might otherwise be obscured if one remains engrossed in heads-down, day-to-day work, as in “Discovering that our largest customer was having quiet meetings with the competition was a pretty important out-of-band message to leadership”; similar to ping and optics and even eat your own dogfood, this jargon has transcended its technical origins to be adopted by those who want to veneer engineering sophistication over their more prosaic utterances