Acronyms galore

Each domain has its set of acronyms that those in the know throw around.

It's often embarrassing to ask what an acronym means. And that's why some use them -- to show how

So to prepare for such warfare, for many years I've been adding acronyms to various Quizlet apps to help me memorize only those I've forgotten about.

I've also been maintaining a static list at:

https://wilsonmar.github.io/acronyms

Please let me know if I need to change or add an entry.

Here's my list so far:

#

• 2FA = Two-Factor Authentication (MFA)
• 3DES = Triple Digital Encryption Standard

A

• A11Y = Accessibility (numeronym of 11 letters between a and y)
• AAC = Azure Architecture Center (Microsoft)
• ABAC = Attribute-Based Access Control
• AC = Alternating Current (as in electrical wall plugs)
• ACI = Azure Container Instance (Microsoft)
• ACL = Access Control List (defines CRUD permissions for an identity)
• ACM = AWS Certificate Manager (Amazon)
• ACR = Azure Container Registry (Microsoft)
• AD = Active Directory (Microsoft’s branding for technologies that control access by users and groups)
• ADC = Analog to Digital Converter
• ADC = AWS Direct Connect (Amazon)
• AEAD = Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data (cipher used in TLS)
• AES = Advanced Encryption Standard (symmetric encryption algorithm)
• AFR = Annual Failure Rate
• AGI = Artificial General Intelligence
• AHOD = All Hands On Deck
• AI = Artificial Intelligence
• AIS = Automated Indicator Sharing (of threats, from cisa.gov)
• AICPA = Association of International Certified Professional Accountants
• AJAX = Asynchronous Javascript and XML
• AKA = Also Known As (common vernacular)
• AKS = Azure Kubernetes Service (Microsoft)
• AKV = Azure Key Vault
• ALB = Application Load Balancer (Amazon)
• ALE = Annualized Loss Expectancy
• ALEER = Adopt Land Ex pand Extend Renew
• ALM = Application Lifecycle Management (all that goes into managing building and maintaining software applications)
• ALZ = Azure Landing Zones (Microsoft)
• AM = Account Manager
• AMA = Ask Me Anything
• AMA = Azure Marketplace Application (such as HashiCorp Consul Service)
• AMI = Amazon Machine Image (Amazon and Azure image containing operating system and apps)
• AMQP = Advanced Message Queuing Protocol
• AMZN = (Amazon corporation stock market symbol)
• AO = Authorizing Official (in RMF)
• API = Application Programming Interface
• APJ = Asia + Pacific + Japan
• APM = Application Performance Monitoring
• APT = Advanced Persistent Threat
• ARG = Azure Resource Graph (of Microsoft Container Registry)
• ARM = Advanced RISC Machine (type of computer chip)
• ARM = Azure Resource Manager (Microsoft)
• ARN = Amazon Resource Name (Amazon)
• ARO = Annual Rate of Occurrence
• ARP = Address Resolution Protocol (Networking)
• ARR = Annual Recurring Revenue
• ASAP = As Soon As Possible
• ASC = Azure Security Center (Microsoft)
• ASG = Auto Scaling Group (AWS)
• ASG = Application Security Group (Azure)
• ASI = Artificial Super-Intelligence
• ASIC = Application-Specific Integrated Circuit
• ASIM = Advanced Security Information Model (schemas by Microsoft Sentinel)
• ASM = AWS Secrets Manager (Amazon)
• ASN = Autonomous System Number (AWS unique endpoint identifier)
• ASO = Azure Service Operator
• ATA = Advanced Threat Analytics (Microsoft)
• ATARC = Advanced Technology Academic Research Center (non-profit collaborative forum on emerging technology challenges like zero trust)
• ATO = Authority To Operate (FEDRAMP designation for production-ready state)
• AuthN = Authentication (contraction)
• AuthZ = Authorization (contraction)
• AWS = Amazon Web Services (cloud services provider)
• AZ = Availability Zone

B

• B2B = Business to Business (marketing)
• B2C = Business to Consumer (marketing)
• BANT = Budget + Authority + Need + Timeframe (framework for buyer readiness)
• BAU = Business Administration Unit
• BBS = BitBucket Server (self-managed edition of BitBucket source version manager from Atlassian)
• BCDR = Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
• BCP = Business Continuity Plan
• BDM = Business Decision Maker
• BDR = Business Development Representative
• BEC = Business Email Compromise (spoofing emails to impersonate your company‚Äôs supervisors or CEO or vendors)
• BERT = Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (Google GenAI)
• BGP = Border Gateway Protocol
• BHAG = Big Hairy Audacious Goal
• BIA = Business Impact Assessment
• BIOS = Basic Input Output System
• BKM = Best Known Method
• BLE = Bluetooth Low Energy
• BOM = Bill of Material
• BPMN = Business Process Model Notation
• BRB = Be Right Back (internet slang)
• BRM = Business Requirements Management
• BTP = Behavioral Threat Protection
• BTW = By The Way
• BU = Business Unit
• BVA = Business Value Assessment
• BYOIP = Bring Your Own IP address
• BYOK = Bring Your Own Key

C

• C&C = Command and Control
• C2E = Commercial Cloud Enterprise
• CA = Certificate Authority (issues cryptographic certificates)
• CaC = Configuration as Code
• CAF = Cloud Adoption Framework (multi-cloud)
• CAGR = Compound Annual Growth Rate
• CAI = Cloud Asset Inventory (Google)
• CAIQ = Consensus Assessments Initiative Questionnaire
• CAM = Corporate Account Manager (role)
• CAP = Common Alerting Protocol (XEP-127)
• CAP = Cybersecurity Assessment Plan (FISMA)
• CAPEX = Capital Expenditures (impacts Asset Balance Statements and can be amortized over time)
• CAPTCHA = Completely Automated Public Turing (test) to tell Computers and Humans Apart
• CASB = Cloud Access Security Broker (enterprise management software to mediate cloud service access by users across all types of devices)
• CBK = Common Body of Knowledge
• CCB = Change Control Board (organization)
• CCE = Critical Customer Escalation
• CCM = Cloud Controls Matrix (from CSA)
• CCM = Continuous Controls Monitoring
• CCM = Customer Communications Management
• CCP = Common Control Provider (per RMF)
• CCP = Crisis Communication Plan
• CCS = Complete Corresponding Source (code)
• CCTV = Closed-circuit TeleVision
• CDK = Cloud Development Kit (AWS)
• CDM = Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation
• CDN = Content Delivery Network (Amazon)
• CDPI = Control Data-Plane Interface (between SDN Datapath and Controller)
• CEO = Chief Executive Officer
• CfCT = Customizations for Control Tower Amazon
• CD = Continuous Deployment (into Production for Productive use)
• CE = Community Edition
• CF = CloudFormation (AWS IaC)
• CFAA = Computer Fraud & Abuse Act (of 1986)
• CFT = Cloud Foundation Toolkit (Google Forseti Config Validator managed by Scorecard CLI utility)
• CG = Customer Gateway
• CI = Continuous Integration
• CIAN = Customer Identity and Access Management
• CIDR = Classless Inter-Domain Routing (networking)
• CIEM = Cloud Infrastructure and Entitlement Management (invented by Gartner)
• CIM = Common Information Model (Splunk)
• CIP = Critical Infrastructure Protection (plan)
• CIRP = Cyber Incident Response Plan
• CIS = Center for Internet Security
• CISA = Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (US government organization)
• CISO = Chief Information Security Officer
• CKL = Compromised Key List
• CKMS = Cryptographic Key Management System
• CLI = Command Line Interface (used to run Linux shell scripts)
• CMK = Customer-Managed Key (for encryption)
• CMP = Cloud Management Platform (for easier use of multiple clouds)
• CN = Common Name (a human-readable name of the subject in certificates)
• CNAME = Canonical Name Record (DNS)
• CNI = Container Network Interface (Kubernetes)
• CMDB = Configuration Management Database (ITIL term for where all aspects of the system is defined)
• CNSS = Committee on National Security Systems
• COGS = Cost of Goods Sold (Financial Accounting)
• COOP = Continuity of Operations (plan)
• COSO = Committee of Sponsoring Organization
• COTS = Commercial Off-The-Shelf (Software vs. custom-built)
• CPA = Certified Public Accountant
• CPIC = Capital Planning Investment Controls
• CPS = Customer Profitability Score
• CPU = Central Processing Unit
• CRD = Custom Resource Definition (Extends Kubernetes API)
• CRI = Container Runtime Interface (Kubernetes)
• CRR = Cross-Region Replication
• CRL = Certificate Revocation List
• CRM = Customer Relationship Management
• CRR = Cyber Resilience Review (defined by DHS)
• CRT = Common Release Tooling (built on top of GitHub Actions CI/CD)
• CS = Customer Success (organization)
• CSA = Cloud Security Alliance
• CSAF = Common Security Advisory Framework (defined by OASIS)
• CSB = Cloud Service Broker
• CSC = Cloud Service Customer
• CSC = Critical Security Controls
• CSE = Customer Success Engineer
• CSF = Cyber Security Framework (NIST ISO 27018)
• CSI = Container Storage Interface (Kubernetes)
• CSM = Customer Success Manager
• CSP = Cloud Service Provider
• CSP = Cryptographic Service Provider
• CSPM = Cloud Security Posture Management (Azure Defender, Palo Alto Prisma Cloud, Qualys CloudView, Trend Micro Cloud One Conformity)
• CSQL = Customer Success Qualified Lead (HashiCorp internal term)
• CSR = Certificate Signing Request
• CSRF = Cross-Site Request Forgery
• CTA = Call To Action
• CTAP = Client To Authenticator Protocol
• CTF = Cyber Threat Framework
• CTI = Cyber Threat Intelligence
• CTO = Chief Technology Officer
• CTS = Consul-Terraform Sync (HashiCorp product)
• CVE = Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (identified through the US CISA database)
• CVRF = Common Vulnerability Reporting Framework (defined by OASIS)
• CVSS = Common Vulnerability Scoring System
• CWE = Common Weakness Enumerations (known in programming source code)
• CWPP = Cloud Workload Protection Platform (Microsoft, Palo Alto)

D

• DaaS = Data as a Service
• DA = Developer Advocate
• DAC = Discretionary Access Control (for Security)
• DAO = Decentralized Autonomous Organization
• DART = Detection and Response Team (Microsoft)
• DAX = DynamoDB Accelerator (Amazon)
• DB = Database
• DC = Data Center (in the context of Consul - a set of Consul nodes within a region)
• DC = Domain Controller (Microsoft server that authenticates user identities and authorizes their access to resources)
• DCAP = Data-Centric Audit Protection
• DDD = Domain Driven Design
• DDL = Data Definition Language (SQL databases)
• DDoS = Distributed Denial of Service Attack
• DDPM = Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models (Generative AI)
• DEK = Data Encryption Key (Microsoft secret held to protect data stored in SQL servers)
• DEI = Diversity + Equity + Inclusion
• DES = Digital Encryption Standard (56 bits)
• DEX = Decentralized Exchanges (Blockchain)
• DFIR = Digital Forensics and Incident Response
• DHCP = Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (automatically assigns IP addresses to devices on a network)
• DHS = Department of Homeland Security (US government organization)
• DLP = Data Loss Prevention
• DML = Data Modeling Language (SQL databases)
• DMS = Database Migration Service (AWS)
• DMZ = Demilitarized Zone
• DNC = Do Not Connect
• DNS = Domain Name Service (networking
• DOD = Department of Defense (US government organization)
• DODAF = Department of Defense Architecture Framework
• DPIA = Data Protection Impact Assessment
• DR = Disaster Recovery
• DRI = Directly Responsible Individual (Coined by Apple for the person to make sure that a task is completed)
• DRP = Disaster Recovery Plan (to transition from alternative business processes back to regular processes.)
• DRPO = Defense Research & Development Organization
• DRY = Don’t Repeat Yourself
• DX = Developer Experience
• DSC = Digital Signature Algorithm (algorithm for signatures)
• DSL = Domain-Specific Language
• DTC = Diagnostic Trouble Code
• DTLS = Datagram Transport Layer Security
• DUT = Device Under Test
• DWaaS = Data Warehouse as a Service
• DX = Developer eXperience

E

• E2E = End-to-End
• EA = Enterprise Architect
• EAL = Evaluation Assurance Level (1-7 of Common Criteria)
• EAM = Externalized Authorization Management
• EAP = Extensible Authentication Protocol (a framework for port-based access control that uses the same three primary components that are used in the RADIUS standard)
• EAR = Export Administration Regulations (US)
• EBS = Elastic Block Store (Amazon)
• ECDSA = Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (algorithm for signatures)
• EDA = Exploratory Data Analysis (Microsoft MLOps)
• EDI = Electronic Data Interchange
• EE = Enterprise Edition
• EIN = Employer Identification Number
• EC2 = Elastic Cloud Compute (AWS)
• ECR = Elastic Container Registry (Amazon service)
• ECS = Elastic Container Service (Amazon service)
• ECU = EC2 compute unit (Amazon)
• EDA = Event Driven Architecture (Serverless)
• EDM = External Dependency Management (NIST)
• EDR = Endpoint Detection and Remediation
• EFA = Elastic Fabric Adapter (AWS)
• EFS = Elastic File System (Amazon file storage service for EC2 instances)
• EFT = Electronic Funds Transfer
• EiB = Exbibyte (exa binary byte)
• EIP = Elastic IP
• ELA = Enterprise License Agreement
• ELB = Elastic Load Balancer (AWS)
• EMR = Elastic Map Reduce (AWS)
• EKM = Extensible Key Management (HashiCorp Vault feature)
• EKS = Elastic Kubernetes Service (AWS)
• ELB = Elastic Load Balancer
• ELT = Extract Load Transform
• EMEA = Europe + Middle East + Africa
• EMI = Electro-Magnetic Interference
• EMR = Elastic Map Reduce (AWS ETL)
• EMRFS = EMRFS (on AWS S3 encryption at rest)
• ENA = Enhanced Networking Adapter (in AWS EC2 AMI instances)
• ENI = Elastic Network Interface (AWS)
• EPS = Earnings Per Share
• ETL = Extract Transform and Load
• EOQ = End of Quarter
• EOM = End of Month
• EO = Executive Order (from US White House)
• EOP = Exchange Online Protection (Microsoft)
• EOY = End of Year
• ERM = Enterprise Risk Management
• ERP = Enterprise Resource Planning (SAP does this)
• EU = European Union
• EV = Extended Validation (certificate)

F

• FBL = Feedback Loop
• FCI = Failover Cluster Instance (Microsoft SQL Server)
• FDE = Full Disk Encryption
• FEA = Federal Enterprise Architecture (by OMB)
• FEDRAMP = Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program
• FGAC = Fine-grained Access Control (AWS)
• FHRP = First Hop Redundancy Protocol (for shared IP routing redundancy)
• FIDO2 = Fast IDentity Online (Spec for web authorization using devices with PKI instead of passwords)
• FIFO = First In - First Out
• FIM = Federated Identity Management
• FIM = File Integrity Monitoring
• FM = Foundation Model (LLM for Generative AI)
• FN = False Negative (test result that missed catching a bad/malicious sample)
• FOMO = Fear Of Missing Out
• FP = False Positive (test result that identified a legitimate sample as bad/malicious)
• FQDN = Fully-qualified Domain Name
• FPS = Flexible Payments Service
• FTE = Full Time Employee/Equivalent
• FQDN = Fully Qualified Domain Name
• FSM = Finite State Machine
• FYE = Fiscal Year End
• FUD = Fear Uncertainty and Doubt

G

• GAPP = Generally Accepted Privacy Principles (developed by accountants)
• GA = General Availability
• GAI = Generative Artificial Intelligence
• GAM = Global Account Manager (job role)
• GANS = Generative Adversarial Networks (Generative AI)
• GB = Gigabytes (173741824 bytes or 1024 megabytes)
• GCE = Google Compute Engine
• GCP = Google Cloud Platform
• GCM = Galois/Counter Mode (mode of operation for symmetric-key cryptographic block ciphers)
• GDPR = General Data Protection Regulation (EU Regulation 2016/679)
• GHA = GitHub Actions (SVM cloud purchased by Microsoft)
• GID = Group Identifier (used in Kubernetes)
• GKE = Google Kubernetes Engine (manages container images within Google cloud)
• GKS = Google Kubernetes Service (runs container images within Google-managed Kubernetes)
• GLB = Global Load Balancing
• GNM = Global Network Manager (HashiCorp product feature)
• GNU = GNU is Not Unix (a recursive acronym for the set of commands in Linux Bash scripts)
• GPG = GNU Privacy Guard (software program to handle encryption)
• GPS = Global Positioning System
• GPT = GUID Partition Table (used with UEFI)
• GRC = Governance and Risk and Compliance
• gRPC = Global Remote Procedure Call (a protocol to connect services)
• GRS = Geo-redundant Storage (Azure)
• GSI = Global System Integrator
• GTM = Go To Market
• GUI = Graphical User Interface
• GW = Gateway

H

• H2M = Human to Machine (interface)
• HA = High Availability
• HADR = High Availability Disaster Recovery
• HC = HashiCorp
• HCL = HashiCorp Configuration Language
• HD = High Definition
• HEC = HTTP Event Collector (Splunk)
• HCM = Human Capital Management (system for HR processes)
• HCP = HashiCorp Cloud Provider
• HCS = HashiCorp Consul Service (SaaS on Azure)
• HIDS = Host-Based Intrusion Detection System
• HIPAA = Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
• HiPPO = Highest Paid Person‚Äôs Opinions
• HMI = Human-Machine Interface
• HPA = HorizontalPodAutoscaler (Kubernetes)
• HPC = High-Performance Compute
• HR = Human Resources
• HSM = Hardware Security Module
• HTML = HyperText Markup Language
• HTTPS = HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure (the protocol that uses port 443)
• HVA = High-Value Asset
• HVM = Hardware Virtual Machine
• HVN = HashiCorp Virtual Network

I

• I18N = Internationalization (numeronym - 18 letters between “i” and “n”)
• IA = Interoperability Agreement (between enterprises)
• IaaS = Infrastructure as a Service
• IaC = Infrastructure as Code
• IAB = Internet Architecture Board (maintains an ethics-related statement concerning the use of the Internet. A technical advisory group of researchers and technical professionals responsible for Internet growth and management strategy and standards oversight.)
• IAM = Identity and Access Management
• IAP = Identity-Aware Proxy (Google Cloud)
• IASAE = Information Assurance Security Architecture and Engineering
• IAST = Interactive Application Security Testing
• IBN = Internet-based Networking (for SDN)
• IC = Integrated Circuit
• ICFR = Internal Control over Financial Reporting
• ICMP = Internet Control Message Protocol (used by the Linux ping command)
• ICS = Industrial Control System (aka OT)
• ICT = Information and Communication Technology
• ICYMI = In Case You Missed It
• ID = Identifier
• IDaaS = Identity as a Service
• IDE = Integrated Development Environment
• IDOR = Insecure Direct Object Reference
• IdP = Identity Provider (such as Okta)
• IDP = Internal Developer Platform
• IDS = Intrusion Detection System (A detective control used to detect attacks after they occur. A signature-based IDS (also called definition-based) uses a database of predefined traffic patterns. An anomaly-based IDS (also called behavior-based) starts with a performance baseline of normal behavior and compares network traffic against this baseline. An IDS can be either host-based (HIDS) or network-based (NIDS)
• IEM = Infrastructure Event Management (AWS service to ensure high traffic can be accommodated)
• IETF = Internet Engineering Task Force
• IFS = Internal Field Separator
• IGA = Identity Governance and Administration
• IGW = Internet Gateway
• IIoT = Industrial Internet of Things
• IKE = Internet Key Exchange
• ILB = Internal Load Balancer (Microsoft)
• ILT = Instructor-Led Training
• IM = Internet Messaging
• IOA = Indicator of Attack
• IOC = Indicator of Compromise
• IOPS = Input Output Per Second (AWS)
• iOS = (Mobile operating system for Apple iPhone)
• IOT = Internet of Things
• IP = Internet Protocol
• IPAM = IP Address Manager (AWS feature that manages CIDR ranges)
• IPE = Information Produced by the Entity
• IPS = Intrusion Protection System (detect or prevent network security attacks such as brute force attacks)
• IPsec = Internet Protocol security
• IPO = Initial Public Offering
• IRL = In Real Life (internet slang)
• IRM = Information Rights Management
• IRT = Incident Response Team
• ISCP = Information System Contingency Plan
• ISMS = Information Security Management System (ISO 27001)
• ISO = International Standards Organization
• ISSO = Information System Security Officer (in RMF)
• ISP = Internet Service Provider (company providing access to the internet)
• ISV = Independent Software Vendor
• IT = Information Technologies
• ITAR = International Traffic in Arms Regulations (US)
• ITIL = Information Technology Infrastructure Library
• ITSM = IT Service Management (implemented of Service Now)

ITU = International Telecommunication Union (defined X.509 certificate format)J

• J2EE = Java Enterprise Edition
• JIT = Just-In-Time (access for Zero Trust)
• JEA = Just-Enough-Access (for Zero Trust)
• JSON = JavaScript Notation
• JWT = JSON Web Token (Internet standard for creating data with optional signature and/or optional encryption whose payload holds JSON that asserts some number of claims)

K

• K8s = Kubernetes (numeronym of 8 letters between K and S)
• kanban = Japanese word for visual signal (adopted for managing software workflow)
• KCL = Kinesis Client Library (AWS)
• KDC = Key Distribution Center
• KEK = Key Encryption Key (key to encrypt the DEK)
• KMIP = Key Management Interoperability Protocol
• KMS = Key Management Service (AWS)
• KPI = Key Performance Indicator
• KPL = Kinesis Python Library (AWS)
• KPU = Kinesis Processing Units (AWS streaming memory and compute)
• KTS = Kubernetes Threat Detection (Google service)
• KRI = Key Recovery Information
• KV = Key-Value (data storage format)
• KYC = Know Your Customer

L

• LAMP = Linux OS + Apache web server + MySQL DB + PHP/Perl/Python (open-source web development technology stack)
• L18N = Localization (numeronym of 18 letters between L and N)
• LAN = Local Area Network
• LDAP = Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (used by Linux to manage user and group access)
• LF-TBAC = Lake Formation tag-based access control (AWS)
• LI = Lead Implementer
• LIFO = Last In - Last Out
• LLC = Limited Liability Company
• LLM = Large Language Model (such as GPT-x for Generative AI)
• LMS = Learning Management System
• LRS = Locally-Redundant Storage (Microsoft)
• LTM = Last Twelve Months
• LUKS = Linux Unified Key Setup (root + boot + swap partition encryption)
• LUN = Logical Unit Number (within a physical storage device volume manager)

M

• MAC = Media Access Control (address of NIC card)
• MAC = Message Authentication Code (a tag appended to a message to verify its authenticity)
• MAP = Minimum Acceptable Product
• MBR = Master Boot Record
• MCSB = Microsoft Cybersecurity Security Benchmark (best-practice framework using Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Successor of Azure Security Benchmark v3)
• MCRA = Microsoft Cybersecurity Reference Architectures
• MDTI = Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence
• MDM = Mobile Device Management
• MEF = Mission Essential Functions
• MELT = Metrics + Errors + Traces + Logs (for Observability)
• MFA = Multi-Factor Authentication
• MIG = Managed Instance Group (for autoscaling within Google Cloud)
• MIT = Most Important Task
• MitB = Man-in-the-Browser (attack vector such as Port stealing that exploits the binding between a port and a media access control (MAC) address)
• MitM = Man-in-the-Middle (an attack in the form of active interception allowing an attacker to intercept traffic and insert malicious code sent to other clients. Kerberos provides mutual authentication and helps prevent MITM attacks)
• ML = Machine Learning
• MLM = Masked Language Model (such as BERT for Natural Language Processing)
• MS = Microsoft
• MSA = Master Service Agreement
• MSK = Managed Streaming for Kafka (AWS)
• MSI = Managed Service Identity
• MTD = Month-To-Date
• mTLS = Mutual TLS
• MOR = Minimum Operating Requirements (describes the minimum environmental and connectivity requirements in order to operate computer equipment)
• MSI = Microsoft Software Installer (file extension for Microsoft Windows installer files)
• MTD = Maximum Tolerable Downtime
• MQTT = MQ Telemetry Transport
• MSAL = Microsoft Authentication Libraries
• MSP = Managed Service Provider
• MSSP = Managed Security Service Provider
• MTA = Mail Transfer Agent
• MTTA = Mean Time To Acknowledge
• MTTD = Mean Time To Detect
• MTTR = Mean Time To Restore/Remediate
• MTU = Maximum Transmission Unit (networking)
• MVP = Minimum Viable Product
• MVP = Most Valuable Professional (Microsoft)
• MY = Multi-Year

N

• NAC = Network Admission Control/Controller (Cisco)
• NAD = Network Access Devices
• NAT = Network Address Translation (allows devices on a private network to communicate with a public network through a networking gateway)
• NB = No Problem
• NDA = Non-Disclosure Agreement
• NDAA = National Defense Authorization Act of 2020 and 2021
• NDE = Net Dollar Expansion
• NDRR = Net Dollar Retention Rate
• NFR = Non-Functional Requirements
• NFS = Network File System
• NFV = Network Function Virtualization
• NGFW = Next-Generation firewall (Originally from Palo Alto - it examines application data to filter traffic at the highest application layer of networks)
• NIA = Network Interface (HashiCorp product feature)
• NIACAP = National Information Assurance Certification and Accreditation Process
• NIAP = National Information Assurance Partnership (Common Criteria)
• NIC = National Interface Card
• NIST = National Institute of Standards and Technology (US)
• NLB = Network Load Balancer (Amazon)
• NOC = Network Operations Center
• NoSQL = (Nonrelational database system such as key-value pair document storage in DynamoDB)
• NPS = Net Promoter Score (rating by customers willing to promote to others)
• NSG = Network Security Group (Azure)
• NSP = Next Sentence Prediction (GenAI for BERT Natural Language Processing)
• NTA = Network Traffic Anomaly
• NTM = Next Twelve Months
• NTP = Network Time Protocol
• NVD = National Vulnerability Database (weaknesses in the computational logic code maintained by the US government for the world)

O

• O3DE = Open 3D Engine (open-source 3D game development engine from Amazon. Successor to Amazon Lumberyard)
• OAI = Origin Access Identity (virtual identity used to require users to access content via CloudFront URl instead of S3 URL)
• OASIS = Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (defined CSAF and CVRF)
• OCI = Container Open Initiative (for Kubernetes to replace Docker)
• OCSP = Online Certificate Status Protocol
• OCM = Organizational Change Management
• ODNI = Office of the Director of National Intelligence
• OEM = Original Equipment Manufacturer
• OEP = Occupant Emergency Plan
• OIDC = OpenID Connect
• OKR = Objective and Key Results
• OLA = Operational Level Agreement
• OLAP = OnLine Analytical Processing (A business intelligence approach that allows users to analyze large amounts of data from different points of view)
• OLTP = OnLine Transaction Processing
• OKR = Objectives and Key Results
• OOP = Object Oriented Programming
• OPA = Open Policy Agent (Policy as Code agent from Styra used in Kubernetes Admission Controller and Terraform)
• OPEX = Operating Expenditures (impacts Profit and Loss statement for current periods)
• OS = Operating System
• OSCAL = Open Security Controls Assessment Language (NIST-defined format for communicating CVEs)
• OSCP = Online Certificate Status Protocol (used to obtain the revocation status of X.509 digital certificates)
• OSI = Open Systems Interconnection
• OSINT = Open Source Intelligence
• OSS = Open Source Software
• OT = Operational Technology
• OTP = One-Time Password
• OVAL = Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language
• OU = Organizational Unit
• OWASP = Open Web Application Security Project

P

• PaC = Policy as Code
• PaaS = Platform as a Service
• PAM = Privileged Access Management
• PASTA = Process for Attack Simulation and Threat Analysis
• PAT = Port Address Translation (networking)
• PAW = Privileged Access Workstation (Microsoft)
• PAYG = Pay-As-You-Go (for billing)
• PBC = Provided By Client (SOC term)
• PC = Personal Computer (refers to a Microsoft Windows machine)
• PCI = Peripheral Components Interconnect
• PCI DSS = Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (private regulation by credit card processors to prevent identity theft)
• PDD = Project Delivery Document (HashiCorp doc containing IS project scope prerequisites scheduling info etc.)
• PDF = Portable Document Format (the format created by Adobe to create a univerally accessible file containing graphics and text)
• PEM = Privacy Enhanced Mail (AWS private key certificate encoding file type)
• PEP = Policy Enforcement Point (filters requests and makes eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) to a Policy Decision Point (PDP)
• PETM = Parameter-Efficient Tuning Methods (in Generative AI)
• PFS = Perfect Forward Secrecy
• PHD = Personal Health Dashboard
• PHI = Protected Health Information
• PHP = (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. A web scripting language used in WordPress)
• PHS = Password Hash Synchronization (Microsoft Azure AD Connect)
• PID = Process Identifier
• PII = Personally Identifiable Information
• PIM = Privileged Identity Management
• PIN = Personal Identification Number (a secret consisting of a small number)
• PIOPS = Provisioned Input Output Operations Per Second
• PIV = Personal Identity Verification
• PKE = Public Key Encryption
• PKI = Public Key Infrastructure (manages cryptographic certificates)
• PM = Product Management/Manager
• PLC = Programmable Logic Controller
• P&L = Profit and Loss
• PMM = Product Marketing Manager (organizational role)
• PMO = Program Management Office
• POA&M = Plan of Action and Milestones
• PoC = Proof of Concept
• POLP = Principle of Least Privilege
• POM = Production Operations Management
• POR = Process of Record
• PPG = Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (networking)
• PPG = Proximity Placement Group (Azure VMs)
• PPK = Putty Private Key (AWS private key certificate encoding file type for Windows PuTTY SSH client)
• PPTP = Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol
• PR = Pull Request (GitHub feature for suggesting code changes and integrating them into the main code base)
• PS = Professional Services
• PSE = Professional Services Engineer
• PSIRT = Product Security Incident Response Team (at Cisco)
• PSK = Pre-Shared Key
• PTA = Pass-Through Authentication (agents in Microsoft Azure AD Connect)
• PUA = Potentially Unwanted Application
• PV = Persistent Volume (Kubernetes)
• PV = Paravirtual Virtualization (type of Linux AMI boot loader)
• PVC = Persistent Volume Claim (Kubernetes)
• PWC = Price Waterhouse Coopers (International Global Integrator Consulting firm)

Q

• QA = Quality Assurance
• QBR = Quarterly Business Review
• QKD = Quantum Key Distribution (secures communication using a cryptographic protocol involving quantum computing with lasers)
• QLDB = Quantum Ledger Database (AWS)
• QoQ = Quarter on Quarter
• QoS = Quality of Service

R

• RACI = Responsible + Accountable + Consulted + Informed (Responsibility Assignment Matrix)
• RAID = Redundant Array of Independent Disks
• RAM = Random Access Memory
• RAN = Radio Access Network
• RASP = Runtime Application Self-Protection
• RAT = Remote Access Trojan
• RBAC = Role-Based Access Control
• RBG = Random Bit Generator
• RCA = Root Cause Analysis
• RCE = Root Code Execution
• RDP = Remote Desktop Protocol (Microsoft technology for users to access a Windows computer remotely)
• RDS = Relational Database Service (AWS cloud SQL service to host databases)
• REST = Representational State Transfer
• RFI = Request for Information
• RFP = Request for Proposal
• RFQ = Request for Quote
• RGB = Red Green Blue (colors)
• RGDD = Reliable Group Data Delivery (SDN)
• RISC = Reduced Instruction Set Computing
• RMF = Risk Management Framework (NIST ISO 27001)
• RNN = Recurrent Neural Network (in Deep Learning)
• ROA = Return on Assets
• ROC = Report on Compliance (issued by DCS PSI auditors)
• ROE = Return on Equity
• ROI = Return on Investment
• ROM = Read-only Memory
• ROS = Return on Sales
• ROSA = Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (containers)
• RPA = Robotic Process Automation
• RPC = Remote Procedure Call
• RPO = Recovery Point Objective
• RPS = Requests Per Second
• RRA = Rapid Risk Assessment
• RRS = Reduced Redundancy Storage (AWS)
• RSA = Resident System Engineer (role within HashiCorp)
• RSA = Rivest + Shamir + Adleman (an encryption algorithm and company named based on the initials of its inventors)
• RTC = Real Time Clock
• RTO = Recovery Time Objective
• RTSP = Real-Time Streaming Protocol (AWS Kinesis)
• RUM = Resources Under Management (HashiCorp Terraform at scale)
• RaMP = Rapid Modernization Plan (Microsoft Zero Trust)

S

• S3 = Simple Storage Service (AWS file object service)
• SaaS = Software as a Service
• SAM = Serverless Application Model (Amazon CLI)
• SAML = Security Assertion Markup Language (XML-based standard for authentication and authorization)
• SAN = Storage Area Network
• SAP = Systems Applications and Product (large German ERP software company)
• SAP = System Assessment Plan
• SAQ = Self-Assessment Questionaire (of DSS PCI)
• SAR = Security Assessment Report
• SARIF = Static Analysis Results Interchange Format (standard by OASIS for sharing static vulnerability analysis results)
• SARs = System Assessment Results
• SASE = Secure Access Service Edge (Microsoft & Trust Broker SaaS by Palo Alto Prisma zScaler Cato Cloudfare)
• SAST = Static Application Security Testing
• SBI = Service-Based Interface
• SBOM = Software Bill of Materials
• SCA = Software Composition Analysis (identify vulnerable components in containers)
• SCADA = Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition
• SCC = Security Command Center (Google’s SOC service)
• SCEP = Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol
• SCM = Source Control Manager (such as GitHub)
• SCP = Service Control Policy (in AWS to govern the use of other IAM policies)
• SCSS = Sidecar Container Security Stack
• SCT = Schema Conversion Tool (AWS)
• SDE = Standardized Development Environment
• SDK = Software Development Kit
• SDN = Software-Defined Networking (used by AWS - an advancement to BGP used on public networks)
• SDLC = System Development Life Cycle
• SDMN = Software-defined Mobile Network (for SDN)
• SDP = Software Defined Perimeter
• SEB = Secure Enterprise Browsers
• SES = Simple Email Service (AWS)
• SF = Service Fabric (Azure)
• SG = Security Group
• SHA = Secure Hash Algorithm (a method to identify whether a file has been altered - also used by GitHub to create an index)
• SHD = Service Health Dashboard (AWS)
• SI = Systems Integrator
• SIA = Storage Infrequent Access (AWS)
• SIEM = Security Information and Event Management
• SIG = Special Interest Group
• SIRT = Security Incident Response Team (work in a SOC department)
• SLA = Service Level Agreement
• SLE = Single Loss Expectancy
• SLI = Service Level Indicator
• SLO = Service Level Objective
• SLR = Service Linked Role (in IAM for Amazon Lightsail)
• SLSA = Supply chain Levels for Software Artifacts (4-level framework for ensuring the integrity of software)
• SME = Subject Matter Expert
• SMF = Session Management Function
• SMI = Service Mesh Interface
• SNMP = Simple Network Management Protocol
• SMaaS = Service Mesh as a Service
• SMTP = Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
• SNI = Server Name Indication (SSL)
• SNS = Simple Notification Service (to send and receive notifications in AWS)
• SOA = Service Oriented Architecture
• SOAP = Simple Object Access Protocol (uses XML)
• SOAR = Security Orchestration Automation and Response
• SOW = Statement of Work
• SOC = Security Operations Center
• SOC2 = Systems and Organization Controls (AICPA ISO 27701)
• SOP = Standard Operating Procedure
• SORN = System of Record Notice
• SOX = Sarbanes-Oxley Act
• SPI = Service Provider Interface
• SPI = Secure Personal Information
• SPICE = Super-fast, Parallel, In-memory Calculation Engine (used in AWS QuickSight)
• SPIFFE = Secure Production Identity Framework for Everyone (spec used by Consul Connect service mesh for establishing service identities)
• SPOC = Single Point of Contact
• SPOF = Single Point of Failure
• SPLK = Splunk’s stock ticker symbol
• SPSCR = Security, Privacy, and Supply Chain Risks (in RMF)
• SQL = Structured Query Language
• SQS = Simple Queue Service (AWS hosted queues of messages)
• SRA = Security Reference Architecture
• SRE = Site Reliability Engineer (job role)
• SSAE = Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements
• SSD = Solid-State Drive (data storage)
• SSE = Security Service Edge
• SSE = Server-Side Encryption
• SSDLC = Secure Software Development Lifecycle
• SSH = Secure Shell (a Linux feature to enable remote access of computers)
• SSI = Sensitive Security Information
• SSIS = SQL Server Integration Services (Microsoft)
• SSL = Secure Sockets Layer (deprecated by TLS networking protocol)
• SSN = Social Security Number (issued by the US government to unique identify an individual for taxes)
• SSO = Single Sign On
• SSP = System Security Plan
• SSRF = Server Side Request Forgery
• SSRM = Shared Security Responsibility Model
• SSRS = SQL Server Reporting Services (Microsoft)
• STIX = Structured Threat Information eXpression (API of sharing models by MITRE)
• STRIDE = Spoofing of user identity; Tampering; Repudiation; Information disclosure (privacy breach or data leak); Denial of service (DoS); Elevation of privilege
• STS = Security Token Service (AWS)
• STS = StatefulSets (Kubernetes)
• SUT = System Under Test
• SVID = SPIFFE Verifiable Identity Document (cryptographic file used by a workload to prove its identity to a resource or caller)
• SWF = Simple Workflow (service from AWS for developers to run tasks in parallel or sequentially)
• SWG = Secure Web Gateway

T

• TAM = Technical Account Manager
• TAM = Total Addressable Market (marketing)
• TaS = Test as Service
• TAXII = Trusted Automated eXchange of Intelligence Information (how to share)
• TB = TerraByte
• TBD = To Be Decided (common vernacular)
• TCO = Total Cost of Ownership
• TDE = Transparent Data Encryption (HashiCorp Vault feature to substitute encrypted values in databases instead of HSMs)
• TDM = Technical Decision Maker (vs. Business Decision Maker)
• TFC = Terraform Cloud (SaaS Terraform offering)
• TFE = Terraform Enterprise (self-installed/managed Terraform)
• TIC = Trusted Internet Connection
• TIN = Tax Identification Number
• TIP = Threat Intelligence Platform
• TCSEC = Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria
• TCO = Total Cost of Ownership
• TDD = Test-Driven Development
• TDM = Technical Decision Maker
• TFE = Terraform Enterprise
• TGW = Transit GateWay (in AWS cloud)
• TH = Threat Hunting
• TIP = Threat Intelligence Platform
• TLD = Top Level Domain (the letters after the last dot on URLs processed by DNS)
• TLS = Transport Layer Security
• TMI = Too Much Information (common vernacular)
• TOE = Target of Evaluation (what is being evaluated by the Common Criteria EAL)
• TOFU = Trust On First Use
• TOTP = TIme-based One Time Password
• TPISRM = Third Party Information Security Risk Management
• TPM = Trusted Platform Module
• TPRM = Third Party Risk Management
• TSC = Trust Service Criteria
• TSI = Trustworthy Software Initiative (UK)
• TTL = Time to Value (marketing term)
• TTL = Time To Live
• TTP = Trusted Third Party
• TTP = Tactics + Techniques + Procedures (of security attack)
• TTS = Text To Speech
• TVM = Threat and Vulnerability Management (Microsoft)

U

• UAC = User Account Control (on Windows)
• UAT = User Acceptance Test
• UCS = User
• UDM = Unified Data Management
• UDS = Unified Diagnostic Services (use in vehicles)
• UEBA = User and Entity Behavior Analytics (detect any anomalous behavior - deviations from normal patterns of usage which have security implications)
• UEFI = Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (spec. replaces BIOS to boot-up disks larger than 2TB)
• UEM = Unified Endpoint Management/Manager (Microsoft Intune and Config. Manager)
• UDP = User Datagram Protocol (networking)
• UML = Unified Modeling Language
• UPF = User Plane Function
• UPN = User Principal Name (Microsoft)
• URI = Universal Resource Identifier
• URL = Universal Resource Locator
• URM = Under-Represented Minority
• USB = Universal Service Bus
• UTC = Coordinated Universal Time (the new term for GMT)
• UTF = Unicode Transformation Format
• UX = User eXperience

V

• VAR = Value-Added Reseller
• VAT = Value-Added Tax
• VBO = Value-Based Outcome
• VCS = Version Control System
• VDP = Vulnerability Disclosure Program
• VGW = Virtual Gateway (Amazon AWS)
• VIF = Virtual InterFace (networking)
• VIM = Virtualized Infrastructure Manager (AWS)
• VIP = Virtual IP (address)
• VLAN = Virtual Local Area Network
• VM = Virtual Machine
• VMSS = Virtual Machine Scale Set (Azure)
• VMM = Virtual Machine Manager (aka Hypervisor)
• VNC = Virtual Network Computing
• VNF = Virtual Network Function
• VoIP = Voice over Internet Protocol
• VRRP = Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol
• VRM = Vendor Risk Management
• VPA = Vertical Pod Autoscaler (Kubernetes)
• VPC = Virtual Private Cloud (AWS)
• VPG = Virtual Private Gateway (AWS)
• VPS = Virtual Private Server (AWS)
• VPN = Virtual Private Network
• VSM = Value Stream Mapping
• VTL = Virtual Tape Library
• vTPM = Virtual Trusted Platform Module
• VUCA = Volatile + Uncertain + Complex + Ambiguous

W

• W3C = World Wide Web Consortium
• WAAP = Web application and API protection (a comprehensive security approach as an enhancement over web application firewalls)
• WABD = Well Architected By Design
• WAF = Web Application Firewall (AWS)
• WAF = Well-Architected Framework
• WAN = Wide Area Network
• WBS = Work Breakdown Structure
• WEP = Wired Equivalent Privacy
• WFH = Work From Home
• WIP = Work In Process
• WPA = Wi-Fi Protected Access
• WSDL = Web Services Description Language
• WSFC = Windows Server Failover Clustering/Cluster (Microsft)
• WVD = Windows Virtual Desktop (Microsoft)

X

• X.509 = (certificate format used for HTTPS on web servers digitally sign application code secure email and authenticate devices to corporate networks)
• XaaS = Anything as a Service
• XKX = External Key Store (Amazon service to store secrets outside of AWS)
• XDR = Extended Detection and Response (formerly Microsoft Security Center)
• XML = Extensible Markup Language
• XMPP = Extensible Message and Presence Protocol

Y

• YAML = YAML Ain’t Markup Language (Human-readable data-serialization text format)
• YTD = Year-To-Date

Z

• ZRS = Zone-Redundant Storage (Microsoft)
• ZT = Zero Trust
• ZTA = Zero Trust Architecture
• ZTDA = Zero Trust Data Access
• ZTNA = Zero Trust Network Access/Architecture
• ZTS = Zero Trust Security