Acronyms Flashcards
Remember the acronyms for Security+ 701
Acronym
Combined
DLP
Data Loss Prevention: A strategy for making sure that end users do not send sensitive or critical information outside the corporate network.
AES-256
Advanced Encryption Standards 256-bit: A variant of AES using a 256-bit key size, offering the highest level of encryption in the AES family.
MDM
Mobile Device Management: Software that allows IT administrators to control, secure, and enforce policies on smartphones, tablets, and other endpoints. It’s crucial for organizations implementing BYOD policies.
POTS
Plain Old Telephone Service: The voice-grade telephone service that remains the basic form of residential and small business service connection to the telephone network in many parts of the world. It’s being gradually replaced by VoIP services.
NGFW
Next-generation Firewall: A network security device that combines traditional firewall capabilities with other network device filtering functions. It often includes features like application awareness and control, integrated intrusion prevention, and cloud-delivered threat intelligence.
ECC
Elliptic Curve Cryptography: An approach to public-key cryptography based on the algebraic structure of elliptic curves over finite fields.
STIX
Structured Threat Information eXchange: A standardized language for sharing cyber threat intelligence. It’s used to share actionable threat intelligence across organizations.
SoC
System on Chip: An integrated circuit that integrates all or most components of a computer or other electronic system. It’s widely used in embedded systems and mobile devices.
SIM
Subscriber Identity Module: An integrated circuit that securely stores the international mobile subscriber identity and its related key. It’s used in mobile phones to authenticate subscribers.
SAN
Subject Alternative Name: An extension to X.509 that allows various values to be associated with a security certificate. It’s often used to specify additional domains and IP addresses protected by an SSL certificate.
NFC
Near Field Communication: A set of communication protocols that enable two electronic devices to establish communication by bringing them within about 4 cm of each other. It’s often used for contactless payment systems and similar applications.
WEP
Wired Equivalent Privacy: A security algorithm for IEEE 802.11 wireless networks. It’s been deprecated due to security weaknesses.
SLE
Single Loss Expectancy: A dollar figure that is associated with a single event of data loss. It’s used in risk assessment calculations.
WTLS
Wireless Transport Layer Security: A security protocol part of the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) stack. It’s the wireless equivalent of the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol.
BCP
Business Continuity Planning: The process of creating systems of prevention and recovery to deal with potential threats to a company.
CVE
Common Vulnerability Enumeration: A list of publicly disclosed computer security flaws, each with an identification number.
PBX
Private Branch Exchange: A telephone system within an enterprise that switches calls between enterprise users on local lines while allowing all users to share a certain number of external phone lines. It’s used to manage internal and external communications in organizations.
PAP
Password Authentication Protocol: A simple authentication protocol where a user’s password is sent unencrypted over the network. Due to its lack of security, it’s generally only used as a last resort when other protocols are not available.
P2P
Peer to Peer: A distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. It’s commonly used for file sharing and cryptocurrency networks.
RAS
Remote Access Server: A server that provides remote access connectivity to an organization’s internal network. It allows remote users to access network resources as if they were directly connected to the corporate network.
RAT
Remote Access Trojan: A malware program that includes a back door for administrative control over the target computer. It’s often used by cybercriminals to gain unauthorized access to systems.
ARP
Address Resolution Protocol: A protocol used for discovering the link layer address associated with a given IPv4 address.
DPO
Data Privacy Officer: An enterprise security leadership role required by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
MSP
Managed Service Provider: A company that remotely manages a customer’s IT infrastructure and/or end-user systems. They often handle day-to-day management of specialized applications and network infrastructure.
TLS
Transport Layer Security: A cryptographic protocol designed to provide communications security over a computer network. It’s the successor to SSL and is widely used for secure communication on the Internet.
RPO
Recovery Point Objective: The maximum targeted period in which data might be lost from an IT service due to a major incident. It’s a key metric in disaster recovery planning.
HA
High Availability: The ability of a system or component to be continuously operational for a desirably long length of time.
RC4
Rivest Cipher version 4: A stream cipher designed by Ron Rivest in 1987. While still used in some protocols, it’s considered insecure for many applications and has been deprecated in modern cryptographic standards.
SCADA
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition: A control system architecture comprising computers, networked data communications and graphical user interfaces for high-level process supervisory management. It’s widely used in industrial processes.
CCTV
Closed-circuit Television: A TV system in which signals are not publicly distributed but are monitored, primarily for surveillance and security purposes.
SED
Self-encrypting Drives: Hard drives that automatically and continuously encrypt the data on them without any user interaction. They provide an additional layer of data security.
CP
Contingency Planning: The process of preparing for unexpected events or situations that could affect an organization’s operations.
IdP
Identity Provider: A system entity that creates, maintains, and manages identity information for principals while providing authentication services to relying applications.
CYOD
Choose Your Own Device: A business model where employees can choose from a limited selection of devices to use for work.
DNAT
Destination Network Address Translation: A technique for modifying network address information in datagram packet headers while in transit across a traffic routing device.
RTOS
Real-time Operating System: An operating system intended to serve real-time applications that process data as it comes in, typically without buffer delays. It’s commonly used in embedded systems and IoT devices.
GCM
Galois Counter Mode: A mode of operation for symmetric key cryptographic block ciphers widely adopted for its performance.
WIPS
Wireless Intrusion Prevention System: A network device that monitors the radio spectrum for the presence of unauthorized access points and can automatically take countermeasures. It provides active protection for wireless networks.
RA
Registration Authority: An entity that verifies information about a user requesting a digital certificate and tells the Certificate Authority (CA) to issue it. It’s a key component of many PKI systems.
NIDS
Network-based Intrusion Detection System: A system that attempts to detect malicious activity such as denial of service attacks, port scans or attempts to crack into computers by monitoring network traffic. It’s a key component of many network security architectures.
EFS
Encrypted File System: A feature of Windows that provides file system-level encryption.
CIRT
Computer Incident Response Team: A group of IT professionals responsible for responding to computer security incidents.
CRC
Cyclical Redundancy Check: An error-detecting code commonly used in digital networks and storage devices to detect accidental changes to raw data.
SQLi
SQL Injection: A code injection technique used to attack data-driven applications, in which malicious SQL statements are inserted into an entry field for execution. It’s a common web application vulnerability.
RA
Recovery Agent: An entity that is authorized to decrypt data encrypted by others. It’s often used in enterprise key management systems to ensure data can be recovered if encryption keys are lost.
CTO
Chief Technology Officer: An executive-level position focused on scientific and technological issues within an organization.
WPA
Wi-Fi Protected Access: A security protocol developed by the Wi-Fi Alliance to secure wireless computer networks. It’s the successor to the insecure WEP protocol.
MTU
Maximum Transmission Unit: The largest size packet or frame that can be transmitted in a single network layer transaction. It’s an important consideration in network design and troubleshooting.
WIDS
Wireless Intrusion Detection System: A network security system designed to detect unauthorized access or attacks on wireless networks and devices. It’s used to enhance the security of wireless networks.
MDF
Main Distribution Frame: A signal distribution frame for connecting equipment to cables and subsystems. It’s commonly used in telephony and computer networking.
SDN
Software-defined Networking: An approach to network management that enables dynamic, programmatically efficient network configuration to improve network performance and monitoring. It’s a key technology in modern network management.
TPM
Trusted Platform Module: A specialized chip on a computer’s motherboard that stores RSA encryption keys specific to the host system for hardware authentication. It’s used to enhance hardware security in computer systems.
RTBH
Remotely Triggered Black Hole: A technique used to drop undesirable traffic before it enters a protected network. It’s often used to mitigate DDoS attacks.
COPE
Corporate Owned, Personally Enabled: A business model where companies provide their employees with mobile devices to be used for both work and personal use.
SNMP
Simple Network Management Protocol: An Internet Standard protocol for collecting and organizing information about managed devices on IP networks. It’s widely used for network monitoring and management.
ISP
Internet Service Provider: An organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet.
RSA
Rivest, Shamir, & Adleman: A public-key cryptosystem that is widely used for secure data transmission. It’s one of the first practical public-key cryptosystems and is widely used for secure data transmission.
TOU
Time-of-use: A rate plan in which rates vary according to the time of day, season, and day type (weekday or weekend/holiday). It’s often used in utility billing.
SPF
Sender Policy Framework: An email authentication method designed to detect forging sender addresses during the delivery of the email. It’s used to prevent spam and phishing.
ERP
Enterprise Resource Planning: Business process management software that allows an organization to use a system of integrated applications to manage the business.
IoC
Indicators of Compromise: Pieces of forensic data that identify potentially malicious activity on a system or network.
PKI
Public Key Infrastructure: A set of roles, policies, hardware, software and procedures needed to create, manage, distribute, use, store and revoke digital certificates and manage public-key encryption. It’s the foundation for many secure communication protocols.
DKIM
DomainKeys Identified Mail: An email authentication method designed to detect forged sender addresses in emails.
SD-WAN
Software-defined Wide Area Network: A virtual WAN architecture that allows enterprises to leverage any combination of transport services to securely connect users to applications. It’s increasingly popular for managing enterprise networks.
OSINT
Open-source Intelligence: Data collected from publicly available sources to be used in an intelligence context. It’s widely used in cybersecurity for threat intelligence and risk assessment.
MFP
Multifunction Printer: Similar to MFD, it’s a device that combines printing, scanning, copying, and sometimes faxing capabilities. It’s designed to handle various document management tasks.
DSA
Digital Signature Algorithm: A Federal Information Processing Standard for digital signatures.
MTTF
Mean Time to Failure: The average time expected until first failure of a component of a system. It’s commonly used for non-repairable systems.
SSO
Single Sign-on: An authentication scheme that allows a user to log in with a single ID and password to any of several related, yet independent, software systems. It’s widely used in enterprise environments to simplify user access.
NAT
Network Address Translation: The process of modifying IP address information in packet headers while in transit across a traffic routing device. It’s commonly used to enable multiple devices on a private network to access the internet using a single public IP address.
ISSO
Information Systems Security Officer: A person responsible for establishing and maintaining the security posture of a specific information system.
BASH
Bourne Again Shell: A Unix shell and command language, widely used as the default login shell for most Linux distributions.
RIPEMD
RACE Integrity Primitives Evaluation Message Digest: A family of cryptographic hash functions developed in Europe. RIPEMD-160 is the most commonly used version.
PCAP
Packet Capture: An application programming interface for capturing network traffic. It’s widely used in network troubleshooting, analysis, and security monitoring.
CAR
Corrective Action Report: A document describing the actions taken to address non-conformances or incidents in a system or process.
SIEM
Security Information and Event Management: A system that combines security information management and security event management functions into one security management system. It’s crucial for real-time analysis of security alerts.
ALE
Annualized Loss Expectancy: A risk assessment calculation that estimates the potential yearly cost of an asset loss.
OID
Object Identifier: A unique identifier used to name an object in computing. They are extensively used in representation of managed objects in network management, as well as in many other fields.
CA
Certificate Authority: An entity that issues digital certificates, which are used to certify the ownership of a public key.
ESP
Encapsulated Security Payload: Part of the IPsec protocol suite used to provide confidentiality, data integrity, and data source authentication of IP packets.
MAC
Message Authentication Code: A short piece of information used to authenticate a message and ensure its integrity. It’s commonly used in cryptographic protocols.
SSH
Secure Shell: A cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. It’s commonly used for remote command-line, login, and remote command execution.
NIPS
Network-based Intrusion Prevention System: Similar to NIDS, but it can also attempt to block potential threats in addition to detecting them. It’s often used in conjunction with firewalls to provide a layered security approach.
MTBF
Mean Time Between Failures: A reliability measure of hardware products, representing the average time between system breakdowns. It’s often used in manufacturing and engineering.
SSL
Secure Sockets Layer: A deprecated cryptographic protocol designed to provide communications security over a computer network. It’s been superseded by TLS but the term is still widely used.
TKIP
Temporal Key Integrity Protocol: A security protocol used in the IEEE 802.11 wireless networking standard. While once popular, it’s now considered insecure and has been deprecated.
FIM
File Integrity Management: An internal control or process that performs the act of validating the integrity of operating system and application software files.
WAP
Wireless Access Point: A networking hardware device that allows wireless devices to connect to a wired network using Wi-Fi or related standards. It’s crucial for creating wireless networks.
PKCS
Public Key Cryptography Standards: A group of public-key cryptography standards devised and published by RSA Security LLC. They’re widely used in certificate management and encryption applications.
IPSec
Internet Protocol Security: A secure network protocol suite that authenticates and encrypts the packets of data sent over an internet protocol network.
KDC
Key Distribution Center: Part of a cryptosystem intended to reduce the risks inherent in exchanging keys.
CTM
Counter Mode: A mode of operation for block ciphers, turning a block cipher into a stream cipher.
NTLM
New Technology LAN Manager: A suite of Microsoft security protocols that provides authentication, integrity, and confidentiality to users. While still in use, it’s considered less secure than newer protocols like Kerberos.
SDK
Software Development Kit: A set of software development tools that allows for the creation of applications for a certain software package, framework, hardware platform, computer system, video game console, operating system, or similar development platform.
BGP
Border Gateway Protocol: A standardized exterior gateway protocol designed to exchange routing and reachability information among autonomous systems on the Internet.
PAC
Proxy Auto Configuration: A file used to define how web browsers and other user agents can automatically choose the appropriate proxy server for fetching a given URL. It’s used to simplify the management of proxy settings in large organizations.
IR
Incident Response: An organized approach to addressing and managing the aftermath of a security breach or cyberattack.
KEK
Key Encryption Key: A cryptographic key that is used for encrypting other keys.
DES
Digital Encryption Standard: A previously predominant symmetric-key algorithm for the encryption of electronic data, now considered insecure.
OSPF
Open Shortest Path First: An interior gateway protocol that uses link state routing algorithm and falls into the group of interior gateway protocols. It’s widely used in large enterprise networks.
XDR
Extended Detection and Response: A unified security incident detection and response platform that automatically collects and correlates data from multiple proprietary security components. It’s an evolution of EDR, providing broader and deeper visibility across networks.
SAN
Storage Area Network: A dedicated high-speed network that interconnects and presents shared pools of storage devices to multiple servers. It’s commonly used in enterprise-level storage solutions.
IRP
Incident Response Plan: A set of instructions to help IT staff detect, respond to, and recover from network security incidents.
RDP
Remote Desktop Protocol: A proprietary protocol developed by Microsoft, providing a user with a graphical interface to connect to another computer over a network connection. It’s widely used for remote administration of Windows systems.
SFTP
Secured File Transfer Protocol: A network protocol that provides file access, file transfer, and file management over any reliable data stream. It’s commonly used as a more secure alternative to FTP.