Here in one page, are all 1,000+ acronyms covering Business, Finance, Marketing as well as: AI/Quantum/Web3 IT, Security, Networking, Amazon, Azure, GCP, OMG!
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
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- 2FA = Two-Factor Authentication (MFA)
- 2SA = Two-Step Authentication
- 3DES = Triple Digital Encryption Standard
- 4IR = Fourth Industrial Revolution (automation of business processes to make data the primary commodity in your business)
- 5IR = Fifth Industrial Revolution (autonomous AI agents that reason, select tools, take action without human confirmation)
- 86 = NSFW slang for kicking someone out
A
- a11y = accessibility (numeronym of 11 letters between a and y)
- AAC = Azure Architecture Center (Microsoft)
- AAI = Autonomous Agent Interface (operating system instead of CLI or GUI)
- ABAC = Attribute-Based Access Control
- ABI = Application Binary Interface (on Apple operating systems)
- AC = Alternating Current (as in electrical wall plugs)
- ACE = Access Control Entries (determines which subjects - user accounts, host IP addresses, and so on - are allowed or denied access to the object and the privileges given)
- ACI = Azure Container Instance (Microsoft)
- ACL = Access Control List (defines CRUD permissions for an identity)
- ACM = AWS Certificate Manager (Amazon)
- ACR = Azure Container Registry (substitute for GitHub within Microsoft Azure cloud)
- ACS = Azure Communication Service (to send emails)
- AD = Active Directory (Microsoft’s branding for technologies that control access by users and groups)
- ADC = Analog to Digital Converter (converts continuos analog to digital values on microprocessor boards)
- ADC = AWS Direct Connect (Amazon)
- ADE = Automated Device Enrollment (Microsoft 365 Intune auto configuration of macOS)
- ADAS = Advanced Driver Assistance Systems
- ADF = Azure Data Factory (part of Microsoft Fabric)
- ADLS = Azure Data Lake Storage (Microsoft cloud Fabric storage)
- ADR = Architectual Decision Record
- AEAD = Authenticated Encryption with Associated Data (cipher used in TLS)
- AES = Advanced Encryption Standard (symmetric encryption algorithm)
- AFAIK = As Far As I Know (internet slang)
- AFK = Away From Keyboard (gamer slang)
- AFR = Annual Failure Rate
- AGI = Artificial General Intelligence (AI that surpasses human intelligence)
- AHOD = All Hands On Deck
- AI = Artificial Intelligence
- AIB = Azure Image Builder (to run within Azure VMs)
- AIS = Automated Indicator Sharing (of threats, from cisa.gov)
- AICPA = Association of International Certified Professional Accountants
- AISIC = AI Safety Institute Consortium
- AJAX = Asynchronous Javascript and XML
- AKA = Also Known As (common vernacular)
- AKE = Authenticated Key Exchange
- AKS = Azure Kubernetes Service (Microsoft)
- AKV = Azure Key Vault
- ALB = Application Load Balancer (Amazon)
- ALE = Annualized Loss Expectancy
- ALEER = Adopt Land Expand Extend Renew (sales strategy)
- ALM = Application Lifecycle Management (all that goes into managing building and maintaining software applications)
- ALZ = Azure Landing Zones (Microsoft)
- ALU = Arithmetic Logic Unit (within classical CPUs)
- AM = Account Manager
- AMA = Ask Me Anything (slang)
- AMA = Azure Marketplace Application (such as HashiCorp Consul Service)
- AMA = Azure Monitoring Agent (Microsoft)
- AMBA = Azure Monitor Baseline Alerts (Microsoft)
- AMI = Amazon Machine Image (Amazon and Azure image containing operating system and apps)
- AMO = Atomic, Molecular, and Optical physics (Quantum IT)
- AMQP = Advanced Message Queuing Protocol
- AMSI = Antimalware Scan Interface (Windows logging mechanism)
- AMZN = (Amazon corporation stock market symbol and URL shortener host name)
- ANI = Artificial Narrow Intelligence
- ANN = Artificial Neural Networks (emulating the 80 billion neurons in human brains)
- AO = Authorizing Official (in RMF)
- APFS = Apple File System (since macOS High Sierra in 2017, optimized for SSDs instead of Mac OS Extended HFS+ file system for HDDs)
- API = Application Programming Interface
- APJ = Asia + Pacific + Japan
- APM = Application Performance Monitoring
- APT = Advanced Persistent Threat
- APT = Advanced Package Tool
- 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 (can be an initialism where each letter is pronounced)
- ASB = Azure Security Benchmarks (Microsoft)
- ASC = Azure Security Center (Microsoft)
- ASCII = American Standard Code Information Interchange (defined binary values to display letters and special characters)
- ASG = Auto Scaling Group (AWS)
- ASG = Application Security Group (Azure)
- ASI = Artificial Super-Intelligence (sentient AI prioritizing of its own needs and desires)
- 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 = Application Security Orchestration and Correlation (integrated security tools and processes)
- ASOC = Azure Service Operator
- ASPM = Application Security Posture Management
- ASR = Automatic Speech Recognition (an AI capability)
- ASR = Automated System Recovery
- AST = Abstract Syntax Tree (a structured representation of source code used by compilers and tools to catch bugs and refactor code automatically)
- ASVS = Application Security Verifiation Standard (levels defined by OWASP)
- 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)
- AUP = Acceptable Use Policy (for using company assets)
- AuthN = Authentication (contraction)
- AuthZ = Authorization (contraction)
- AVM = Azure Verified Module (meets standards for good IaC)
- 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)
- BATNA = Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement
- BAU = Business Administration Unit
- BAU = Business As Usual (pejorative slang)
- BBS = BitBucket Server (self-managed edition of BitBucket source version manager from Atlassian)
- BCDR = Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
- BCI = Brain Computer Interface
- BCP = Business Continuity Plan
- BEC = Business Email Compromise
- BDM = Business Decision Maker
- BDR = Business Development Representative
- BEC = Business Email Compromise (spoofing emails to impersonate managers, vendors, customers, govt)
- BERT = Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (Google GenAI pre-trained model)
- BFLA = Broken Function Level Authorization
- BFS = Breadth-First Search
- BFP = Bi-Directional Forwarding Detection (networking)
- BGP = Border Gateway Protocol (networking)
- BHAG = Big Hairy Audacious Goal
- BIA = Business Impact Assessment
- BIOS = Basic Input Output System
- BJT = Single Bipolar Junction Transistor
- BKM = Best Known Method
- BLE = Bluetooth Low Energy
- BLF = Business Logic Flaw
- BNPL = Buy Now Pay Later (debit credit offering from Klarna, Affirm, etc.)
- BOD = Board of Directors
- BOLA = Broken Object Level Authorization
- BOPLA = Broken Object Property Level Authorization
- BOM = Bite Order Mark (used in Unicode to define which UTF page a grapheme is located)
- BOM = Bill of Material (for manufacturing)
- Borsh = Binary Object Representation Serializer for Hashing (faster alternative than Serde for Rust)
- BPM = Beats Per Minute (in music)
- BPCS = Basic Process Control System (responsible for process control and monitoring of the industrial infrastructure)
- BPMN = Business Process Model Notation
- BPT = Business Process Technology (OutSystems workflow engine)
- BRB = Be Right Back (internet slang)
- BRG = Blue, Green, and Red (color space instead of RGB by OpenCV)
- BRM = Business Requirements Management
- BSI = Business-Sensitive Informatioin (used in TPM)
- BSM = Basic Security Module (used in TPM)
- BSOD = Blue Screen of Death (on Windows machines)
- BSON = Binary JSON (used only within MongoDB)
- BTP = Behavioral Threat Protection
- BTP = Business Technology Platform (previously SAP Cloud Platform)
- BTW = By The Way (internet slang)
- BU = Business Unit
- BVA = Business Value Assessment
- BYOD = Bring Your Own Device
- BYOK = Bring Your Own Key
- BYOIP = Bring Your Own IP address
- BYOK = Bring Your Own Key
C
- C2 = Command and Control
- C&C = Command and Control
- C2E = Commercial Cloud Enterprise
- C2PA = Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (c2pa.org)
- CA = Certificate Authority (issues cryptographic certificates)
- CaaS = Container as a Service (such as AWS ECS or Azure AKS or Docker Cloud)
- CaC = Configuration as Code
- CAD = Computer-Aided Design
- 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)
- CARML = Common Azure Resource Modules Library (Open Source project)
- 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
- CAR = Content Addressable aRchive (used in IPFS)
- CASB = Cloud Access Security Broker (provides IAM services to mediate cloud service access)
- CBC = Cipher Block Chaining (used by AES openssl encryption)
- CBD = Component Based Development (by reusing pre-existing loosely-coupled modular components)
- CBK = Common Body of Knowledge
- CBRN = Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (risks)
- CCB = Change Control Board (organization)
- CCE = Critical Customer Escalation
- CCM = Cloud Controls Matrix (from CSA)
- CCM = Continuous Controls Monitoring
- CCM = Customer Communications Management
- CCMP = Cipher block Chaining Message authentication code Protocol (AES-based encryption mode with strong security)
- CCP = Common Control Provider (per RMF)
- CCP = Crisis Communication Plan
- CCS = Complete Corresponding Source (code)
- CCTV = Closed-circuit TeleVision
- CD = Continuous Deployment (into Production for Productive use)
- CDK = Cloud Development Kit (AWS)
- CDM = Common Data Model (Microsoft Dataverse for their Power apps)
- CDM = Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation
- CDN = Content Delivery Network (Amazon)
- CDPI = Control Data-Plane Interface (between SDN Datapath and Controller)
- CE = Community Edition
- CEO = Chief Executive Officer (position title)
- CF = CloudFormation (AWS IaC)
- CFAA = Computer Fraud & Abuse Act (of 1986)
- CfCT = Customizations for Control Tower (Amazon)
- CFET = Complementary FET
- CFS = Completely Fair Scheduler (Kubernetes CPU allocation among cgroups)
- CFT = Cloud Foundation Toolkit (Google Forseti Config Validator managed by Scorecard CLI utility)
- CFT = CloudFormation Templates (Amazon)
- 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)
- CID = Content Identifier (hash from content used in web3 IPFS)
- 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)
- CLU = Conversational Language Understanding (Azure AI Language)
- CMDB = Configuration Management Database (ITIL term for where all aspects of the system is defined)
- CMK = Customer-Managed Key (for encryption)
- CMO = Chief Marketing Officer
- 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)
- CNN = Convolutional Neural Networks (Machine Learning)
- CNNS = Convolutional Neural Networks (Machine Learning)
- CNSS = Committee on National Security Systems
- COGS = Cost of Goods Sold (Financial Accounting)
- COMINT = Command Intelligence (from intercepted SIGINT)
- CMOS = Complimentary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (Type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor fabrication process using complementary and symmetrical pairs of p-type and n-type MOSFETs)
- COOP = Continuity of Operations (plan)
- CORS = Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (used by browsers to allow web apps to access resources from other origins)
- COSO = Committee of Sponsoring Organization (of the Treadway Commission)
- CoT = CoT (Chain of Thought - reasoning in AI)
- COTS = Commercial Off-The-Shelf (Software vs. custom-built)
- CPA = Certified Public Accountant
- CPIC = Capital Planning Investment Controls
- CPS = Customer Profitability Score
- CPRA = California Privacy Rights Act
- CRDT = Conflict-free Replicated Data Type (for local-first multi-user systems)
- CPSM = Cloud Security Posture Management
- CPE = Common Platform Enumeration (see Wikipedia)
- CPU = Central Processing Unit
- CQL = Cassandra Query Language
- CRA = Cyber Resilience Act (EU security law that requires companies to report breaches and puts liability on software flaws)
- CRD = Custom Resource Definition (Extends Kubernetes API)
- CRDTs = Conflict-free Replicated Data Types (resolves concurrent changes in collaborative apps)
- CRI = Container Runtime Interface (Kubernetes)
- CRR = Cross-Region Replication
- CRL = Certificate Revocation List
- CRM = Customer Relationship Management
- CRR = Cross-Region Replication (AWS S3 capability)
- CRR = Cyber Resilience Review (defined by DHS)
- CRT = Common Release Tooling (built on top of GitHub Actions CI/CD)
- CRUD = Create Read Update Delete (basic operations)
- 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)
- CSIRC = Computer Incident Response Center
- CSIRT = Computer Incident Response Team
- CSM = Customer Success Manager
- CSO = Cloud Security Officer
- CSP = Cloud Service Provider
- CSP = Content Security Policy (defines which origins browsers are allowed to load resources)
- 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 (marketing)
- CTAP = Client To Authenticator Protocol
- CTF = Capture The Flag (in a cybersecurity tournament)
- CTF = Cyber Threat Framework
- CTI = Cyber Threat Intelligence
- CTO = Chief Technology Officer
- CTS = Consul-Terraform Sync (HashiCorp product)
- CUA = Computer Using Agent (OpenAI’s working AI agent Operator controlling your computer)
- CUDA = Compute Unified Device Architecture (parallel computing platform & API developed by NVIDIA)
- CVD = Color Vision Deficiency (aka Color Blindness)
- 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
- DAAT = Dangerous Asymmetric Advanced Technologies
- DAC = Digital to Analog Converter
- DAC = Discretionary Access Control (for Security)
- DAG = Directed Acyclic Graph
- DAO = Decentralized Autonomous Organization
- Dapps = Decentralized Applications (run on peer-to-peer networks, such as a blockchain using smart contracts)
- DART = Detection and Response Team (Microsoft)
- DAX = Data Analysis Expressions (Microsoft formula language)
- DAX = DynamoDB Accelerator (Amazon)
- DB = Database
- DBMS = DataBase Management System
- 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
- DCL = Data Control Language (to GRANT, REVOKE SQL data)
- DDP = Dual Data Plane (Cisco Digital Twin running CI/CD blue/green patching)
- DDD = Domain Driven Design
- DDL = Data Definition Language (to CREATE, ALTER, DROP SQL data)
- DDoS = Distributed Denial of Service Attack
- DDPM = Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models (Generative AI)
- DDR4 = Double Data Rate generation 4 (at 2133-3200 MT/s, a type of SDRAM that each generation doubles the data transfer rate of traditional SDR memory, at lower voltage of 1.2V)
- DEI = Diversity + Equity + Inclusion
- DEK = Data Encryption Key (secret generated from Customer Managed keys to protect data)
- DES = Digital Encryption Standard (56 bits)
- DEX = Decentralized Exchanges (Blockchain)
- DFC = Distributed Fragments Cryptography (by AKeyless.io)
- DFIR = Digital Forensics and Incident Response
- DFS = Depth-First Search (programming algorithm)
- DGO = Data Governance Organization/Officer (for security)
- DHCP = Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (automatically assigns IP addresses to devices on a network)
- DHS = Department of Homeland Security (US government organization)
- DiFi = Distributed File Integrity
- DiD = Defense in depth (for security)
- DIR = Detection and Incident Response (security workflow)
- DIY = Do It Yourself
- DKIM = DomainKeys Identified Mail (provides public keys for signing of emails to prevent spoofing)
- DLP = Data Loss Prevention
- DMA-BUF = Direct Memory Access Buffering (for GPU)
- DMARC = Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance (policies for VMC about what to do when SPF and DKIM fails)
- DMCA = Digital Millennium Copyright Act
- DMI = Direct Media Interface (the bus connecting the chipset and the CPU)
- DML = Data Manipulation Language (to INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE SQL data)
- DMS = Database Migration Service (AWS & Microsoft Azure)
- DMZ = Demilitarized Zone (networking)
- DMV = Dynamic management views (Microsoft SQL query lifecycle insights monitoring)
- DNC = Do Not Connect
- DNN = Deep Neural Network
- DNS = Domain Name Service (networking)
- DoD = Definition of Done
- DOD = Department of Defense (US government organization)
- DODAF = Department of Defense Architecture Framework
- DoH = DNS over HTTPS
- DoR = Definition of Ready
- DPO = Direct Preference Optimization (technique to optimize models based on preference data or ranking)
- DPIA = Data Protection Impact Assessment (required by EU GDPR)
- DPL = Data Protection Officer (job role required by GDPR)
- DQL = Data Query Language (to SELECT SQL data)
- DR = Disaster Recovery
- DRAM = Dynamic Random Access Memory
- DRI = Directly Responsible Individual (Coined by Apple for the person to make sure that a task is completed)
- DPP = Digital Product Passport (a blockchain to collect and share product sustainability, environmental, and recyclability attributes from raw material sourcing and manufacturing process to end-of-life disposal)
- DRP = Disaster Recovery Plan (to transition from alternative business processes back to regular processes.)
- DRPO = Defense Research & Development Organization
- DRY = Don’t Repeat Yourself
- DRDoS = Distributed Reflection Denial-of-Service
- DSC = Digital Signature Algorithm (algorithm for signatures)
- DSC = Desired State Configuration (declarative DevOps)
- DSL = Domain-Specific Language (custom data structure to control processing such as Apache Kafka streams)
- DSL = Digital Subscriber Line
- DSP = Digital Signal Processing
- DSSE = Dead Simple Signing Envelope (signing methods and formats used by Secure Systems Lab)
- DSSS = Direct-Sequence Spread Spectrum
- DST = Daylight Saving Time
- DTLS = Datagram Transport Layer Security
- DUT = Device Under Test
- DVIA = Damn Vulnerable iOS Application (written in Swift, on GitHub)
- DVWA = Damn Vulnerable Web Application (by OWASP)
- DWaaS = Data Warehouse as a Service
- DWeb = Decentralized Web
- DWBH = Don’t Worry Be Happy (internet slang)
- DX = Developer eXperience
E
- E2E = End-to-End
- E2EE = End-to-End Encryption
- 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)
- EBITDA = Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization
- EBS = Elastic Block Storage (Amazon)
- 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)
- EDA = Exploratory Data Analysis (an iterative process to understand data through investigative analysis of the data)
- EDM = External Dependency Management (NIST)
- EDPB = European Data Protection Board (EU GDPR)
- EDR = Endpoint Detection and Remediation (Defender for endpoints)
- ECDSA = Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (algorithm for signatures)
- ECU = Electronic Control Unit (Embedded system in autos)
- EDA = Exploratory Data Analysis (Microsoft MLOps)
- EDR = Endpoint Detection and Response (security)
- EDI = Electronic Data Interchange
- EE = Enterprise Edition
- EEA = European Economic Area
- EEC = European Economic Community
- EIN = Employer Identification Number
- EFA = Elastic Fabric Adapter (AWS)
- EFF = Electronic Frontier Foundation
- 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
- EMCOMM = Emergency Communications
- EMEA = Europe + Middle East + Africa
- EMI = Electro-Magnetic Interference
- EMP = Electro-Magnetic Pulse
- EMR = Elastic Map Reduce (AWS ETL)
- EMRFS = EMRFS (on AWS S3 encryption at rest)
- ENA = Enhanced Networking Adapter (in AWS EC2 AMI instances)
- ENIAC = Electronic Numeric Integrator And Computer (first general purpose computer)
- ENI = Elastic Network Interface (AWS)
- ENS = Ethereum Name Service (provides names to wallet addresses to simplify token transactions)
- EPS = Earnings Per Share
- ESPR = Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (European Green Deal launched December 2019)
- ETL = Extract Transform and Load
- EOF = End of File
- EOQ = End of Quarter
- EOM = End of Month
- EO = Executive Order (from US White House)
- EOP = Exchange Online Protection (Microsoft)
- EOY = End of Year
- EPSS = Exploit Prediction Scoring System (to predict the likelihood of a vulnerability being exploited)
- ERM = Enterprise Risk Management
- ERP = Enterprise Resource Planning (SAP does this)
- ESB = ???
- eSRAM = embedded Static Random-Access Memory (TSMC memory coupled with the GPU of Microsoft Xbox One gaming console’s architecture)
- ESNI = Encrypted Server Name Indication (with TLS 1.3)
- ETDR = Endpoint Threat Detection and Response (security)
- ETW = Event Tracing for Windows (Microsoft EventPipe)
- EU = European Union
- EUC = End-User Computing (includes SSO, MFA, RBAC, IAM)
- EUV = Extreme Ultraviolet (lithography to make semiconductor chips)
- EV = Extended Validation (certificate)
- EVM = Ethereum Virtual Machine (Ethereum)
- EVMS = Ethereum Virtual Machine Suite (Ethereum)
- EVMOS = Ethereum Virtual Machine Operating System (Ethereum)
F
- FaaS = Functions as a Service
- FAISS = Facebook AI Similarity Search (and clustering of dense vectors, implemented in C++ with Python wrappers using CUDA)
- FAQ = Frequently Asked Questions
- FBL = Feedback Loop
- FCEB = Federal Civilian Executive Branch (US government departments and agencies)
- FCI = Failover Cluster Instance (Microsoft SQL Server)
- FDE = Full Disk Encryption
- FEA = Federal Enterprise Architecture (by OMB)
- FEDRAMP = Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program
- FEA = Finite Element Analysis (generate a computer model of components within actual system to analyze response to stresses)
- FEM = Finite Element Method (method for numerically solving differential equations)
- FFB = Force Feedback (on gaming consoles)
- FFT = Fast Fourier transform
- FGAC = Fine-grained Access Control (AWS)
- FHE = Fully Homomorphic Encryption
- FHRP = First Hop Redundancy Protocol (for shared IP routing redundancy)
- FHS = Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (directory structure of Linux distributions)
- 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 (for Intrusion Detection)
- FinFET = Fin (as in fish) FET
- FIPS = Federal Information Processing Standards (aligns with ISO/IEC 19790 to specify encryption, key management, etc. to protect data over 4 levels)
- FISMA = Federal Information Security Management Act (US government)
- FLC = Fuzzy Logic Control
- FM = Foundation Model (LLM for Generative AI)
- FMCG = Fast-Moving Consumer Goods
- 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)
- FPGA = Field Programmable Gate Array
- FPS = Flexible Payments Service
- FQDN = Fully-Qualified Domain Name
- FPV = First Person View (in 3D games)
- FRAP = Facilitated Risk Analysis Process (analyze impact of each individual org unit)
- FSFET = ForkSheet Field-Effect Transistor
- FTE = Full Time Employee/Equivalent
- FTK = Forensic ToolKit (drive imager tool from AccessData to preserve evidence)
- FQDN = Fully Qualified Domain Name
- FSBP = Foundational Security Best Practices (defined by AWS)
- FSD = Full Self-Driving (by autonomous vehicles)
- FSM = Finite State Machine
- FTW = For The Win (a big contributor to great success)
- FYE = Fiscal Year End
- FYI = For Your Information
- FUD = Fear Uncertainty and Doubt
G
- GAPP = Generally Accepted Privacy Principles (developed by accountants)
- GA = General Availability
- GAA = Gate All-Around (transitor technology used in FinFET & MBCFET)
- GAI = Generative Artificial Intelligence
- GAM = Global Account Manager (job role)
- GANS = Generative Adversarial Networks (Generative AI)
- GAR = Geoogle Artifact Registry (in GCP)
- GB = Gigabytes (173741824 bytes or 1024 megabytes)
- GCE = Google Compute Engine
- GCN = Graph Neural Network
- GCM = Galois/Counter Mode (mode of operation for symmetric-key cryptographic block ciphers)
- GCP = Google Cloud Platform
- GDPR = General Data Protection Regulation (EU Regulation 2016/679)
- GEOINT = Geospatial Intelligence (from analysis and visualization of security activities on a map)
- GG = Good Game (gamer digital handshake to convey sportsmanship)
- GGML = GPT-Generated Model Language (Early Tensor library designed for machine learning large models at high performance)
- GGUF = GPT-Generated Unified Format (model for sharing LLMs with Ollama or LM Studio using JSON-RPC)
- GHA = GitHub Actions (SVM cloud purchased by Microsoft)
- GID = Group Identifier (used in Kubernetes)
- GIL = Global Interpreter Lock (removed in Python 3.13)
- 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
- GLBA = Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (US regulation of financial data privacy protection)
- 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)
- GPIO = General Purpose Input/Output (on an Arduino board)
- GPO = Group Policy Object
- GPS = Global Positioning System
- GPT = Generative Pre-trained Transformer (LLM used in ChatGPT by OpenAI for GenAI)
- GPT = GUID Partition Table (used with UEFI)
- GQA = Generalized Question Answering (a dataset for visual question answering tasks)
- GRC = Governance and Risk and Compliance
- gRPC = Global Remote Procedure Call (a protocol to connect services)
- GRPO = Generalized Reinforcement Policy Optimization (advanced reinforcement learning optimization used by DeepSeek)
- GRS = Geo-Redundant Storage (replication of 3 copies in an Availability Zone in each of two Azure regions)
- GSI = Global Secondary Index (AWS DynamoDB)
- GSI = Global System Integrator
- GTM = Go To Market
- GUI = Graphical User Interface
- GUID = Globally Unique Identifier (a code generated to be unique across space and time for use as an object identifier)
- GW = Gateway
- GZRS = Geo-Zone-Redundant Storage (replication synchronously to 3 Availability Zones in a primary and 3 copies asynchronously in one Availability within a secondary Azure region accessed only after a failover)
H
- H2M = Human to Machine (interface)
- HA = High Availability
- HADR = High Availability Disaster Recovery
- HAL = Hardware Abstraction Layer
- HAML = HTML Abstraction Markup Language (a template used in Ruby Rails views to simplify writing HTML)
- HANA = High-performance ANalytic Application (SAP’s in-memory column-oriented relational DBMS)
- HBD = Happy Birth Day
- HBI = High Business Impact (flag for Azure to add encryption and limit diagnostics collection on sensitive data)
- HBM = High Bandwidth Memory (a sandwich of RAM on top of an imposer next to the processor for 1-4 TB/s bandwidth to GPUs, AI accelerators, and supercomputers)
- HNSW = Hierarchical Navigable Small World (graphs)
- HCL = HashiCorp Configuration Language
- HD = High Definition
- HDFS = Hadoop Distributed File System
- HEC = HTTP Event Collector (Splunk)
- HCM = Human Capital Management (system for HR processes)
- HCP = HashiCorp Cloud Provider
- HCS = HashiCorp Consul Service (SaaS on Azure)
- HDM = High Density Memory (a stack of DRAM near the CPU - faster for use by GPUs & HPC than DDR4 & GDDR5)
- HE = Homomorphic Encryption (Privacy-Preserving technology)
- HIDS = Host-Based Intrusion Detection System
- HIPAA = Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
- HiPPO = Highest Paid Person’s Opinion (deference between high and low status employees)
- HLS = HTTP Live Streaming (Apple video streaming protocol)
- HMI = Human-Machine Interface
- HMM = Hidden Markov Model (AI used for speech recognition)
- HNDL = Harvest Now, Decrypt Later (store encrypted data for decrypting later using post-quantum computers)
- HPA = Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (Kubernetes)
- HPC = High-Performance Compute
- HQL = Hibernate Query Language (object-oriented ORM SQL with inheritance polymorphism used by Java)
- HR = Human Resources
- HRMS = Human Resource Management System
- HRU = High-Risk User(s)
- HSM = Hardware Security Module
- HSTS = HTTP Strict Transport Security (web security policy that protects HTTPS websites against MITM attacks)
- HTAP = Hybrid Transaction and Analytics Processing (Microsoft Azure Synapse Link capability)
- HTML = HyperText Markup Language
- HTTPS = HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure (the protocol that uses port 443)
- HUMINT = Human Intelligence (from human sources such as interviews or spying)
- HVA = High-Value Asset
- HVNC = Hidden Virtual Network Computing (used by ShadowVault malware to provide unauthorized access to vulnerable machines)
- HVP = Hybrid Vault Platform (AKeyless Encryption as a Service)
- HVM = Hardware Virtual Machine
- HVN = HashiCorp Virtual Network
- HXM = Human Management (SAP SuccessFactors HRMS suite)
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 Operational Technologies)
- ICT = Information and Communication Technology
- ICT = Ideal Cycle Time (maximum achievable performance for OEE Fully Productive Time)
- ICYMI = In Case You Missed It
- ID = Identifier
- IDaaS = Identity as a Service (for central management of users and groups)
- IDE = Integrated Development Environment
- IDN = Unicode Domain Names
- 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)
- IDS = Influencer Dynamics Simulator (predicts how followers react to influencers)
- IEC = International Electrotechnical Commission (counterpart to the US NIST)
- IEM = Infrastructure Event Management (AWS service to ensure high traffic can be accommodated)
- IETF = Internet Engineering Task Force
- IYDMMA = If you don’t mind me asking (chat slang)
- IFS = Internal Field Separator (to define character used to split strings in Bash shell scripts)
- IGA = Identity Governance and Administration
- IGPT = Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor
- IGW = Internet Gateway
- IIFE = Immediately Invoked Function Expression (by Webpack)
- IIoT = Industrial Internet of Things
- IKE = Internet Key Exchange
- ILB = Internal Load Balancer (Microsoft)
- ILT = Instructor-Led Training
- IM = Internet Messaging
- IMINT = Imagery (Photography) Intelligence (from satellite or drone photos)
- IMHO = In My Humble Opinion
- IMO = In My Opinion
- IMSI = International Mobile Subscriber Identity (15-digit ID unique to each mobile phone)
- 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)
- IPFS = InterPlanetary File System (a decentralized, peer-to-peer file storage protocol to store and access content without a central server)
- IPC = Inter-Process Communication
- IPE = Information Produced by the Entity
- IPS = Intrusion Protection System (detect or prevent brute force & other attacks on security)
- IPsec = Internet Protocol security
- IPO = Initial Public Offering
- IR = Integration Runtime (compute infrastructure used by Microsoft’s Azure Data Factory)
- IR = Incident Response (Security)
- IRDP = ICMP Router Discovery Protocol
- IRL = In Real Life (internet slang)
- IRM = Information Rights Management
- IRM = Insider Risk management (Microsoft 365 compliance solution)
- IRT = Incident Response Team
- ISAC = Information Analysis Sharing Centres (for threat intelligence)
- ISCP = Information System Contingency Plan
- ISBN = Intelligent Spend and Business Network (SAP offering)
- ISA = Instruction Set Architecture (defines interface between software and different implementations of a processor)
- ISD = Internet Service Provider
- ISMS = Information Security Management System (ISO 27001)
- ISO = International Standards Organization
- ISP = Internet Service Provider (company providing access to the internet)
- ISQ = International System of Quantities
- ISSO = Information System Security Officer (in RMF)
- 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)
- JND = Just Noticeable Difference (The minimum amount of change or difference required for a change to be perceptible to the human eye)
- JOSE = Javascript Object Signing and Encryption (standard)
- JSON = JavaScript Notation (data format)
- 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
- KEDA = Kubernetes-based Event Driven Autoscaler
- KEK = Key Encryption Key (key to encrypt the DEK)
- KMIP = Key Management Interoperability Protocol
- KMS = Key Management Service (AWS)
- KNOB = Key Negotiation of Bluetooth (MITM attack on paired Bluetooth devices’ security mechanisms)
- KOL = Key Opinion Leader
- KPI = Key Performance Indicator
- KPL = Kinesis Python Library (AWS)
- KPU = Kinesis Processing Units (AWS streaming memory and compute)
- KQL = Kusto Query Language (to access Microsoft Azure Data Explorer)
- KTLO = Keep/Keeping The Lights On (minimal necessary effort and income for legacy capabilities)
- KTS = Kubernetes Threat Detection (Google service)
- KRI = Key Recovery Information
- KSAs = Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (Work Roles)
- KV = Key-Value (data storage format)
- KYC = Know Your Customer (requiring identity verification)
L
- l18n = Localization (numeronym of 18 letters between l and n)
- LAM = Large Action Models (multihop & multimodal data type for agentic/action on LLMs)
- LAMP = Linux OS + Apache web server + MySQL DB + PHP/Perl/Python (open-source web development technology stack)
- LAN = Local Area Network
- LARPing = Live Action Role-Playing (nteractive gaming where participants physically act out their characters’ actions in real time)
- LCEL = LangChain Expression Language (chain series of AI models and parsers)
- LCM = Large Concepts Model (Meta’s approach for reasoning)
- LDAP = Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (used by Linux to manage user and group access)
- LED = Light-Emitting Diode
- LER = Lable Edige Router (edge routers used by MPLS using forward equivalence classes)
- LF-TBAC = Lake Formation tag-based access control (AWS)
- LGPD = Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados Pessoais (privacy/data protection law in Brazil)
- LGTM = Looks Good To Me
- LGTM = Loki + Grafana + Tempo + Mimir (Grafana’s integrated stack for logs, metrics, and traces to be collected and visualized)
- LI = Lead Implementer
- LIFO = Last In - Last Out
- LIMS = Laboratory Information Management System
- LINDDUN = framework to ensure privacy
- LLC = Limited Liability Company
- LLM = Large Language Model (such as GPT-x for Generative AI)
- LMM = Large Multimodal Model (Meta’s approach for reasoning)
- LLMNR = Link-Local Multicast Name Resolution (Microsoft protocol for name resolution)
- LMS = Learning Management System
- LOL = Laughing Out Loud (internet slang)
- LoRA = Low-Rank Adaptation (reducing the number of trainable parameters and enabling efficient adaptations by decomposing weight matrices into low-rank matrices)
- LotL = Living off the Land (type of attack)
- LPU = Language Processing Unit (AI Agent OS component)
- LRM = Large Reasoning Models
- LRS = Locally-Redundant Storage (within same Azure Availability Zone)
- LSD = Least Significant Digit
- LSI = Local Secondary Index (AWS DynamoDB)
- LSP = Label Switched Paths (used by MPLS)
- LSR = Label Switched Routers (core routers used by MPLS to swap labels using a label forwarding table)
- 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)
- LVM = Logical Volume Management
- LVM = Large Vision Model (such as Stable Difussion for Generative AI)
- LWE = Learning with errors (cryptographic algorithm)
M
- m8g = Monitoring (numeronym - 8 letters between m and g)
- M&A = Mergers and Acquisitions (business)
- MAC = Media Access Control (address of NIC card)
- MAC = Message Authentication Code (a tag appended to a message to verify its authenticity)
- MAE = Mean Absolute Error (to calculate the accuracy of a regression model)
- MAP = Minimum Acceptable Product
- MASINT = Measurement and Signatures Intelligence (of weapons capabilities and industrial activities)
- MASTG = Mobile Application Security Testing Guide (defined by OWASP)
- MASVS = Mobile Application Security Verification Standard (defined by OWASP)
- MBR = Master Boot Record
- MBCFET = Multi-Bridge Channel Field Effect Transister (Samsung)
- MCSB = Microsoft Cybersecurity Security Benchmark (best-practice framework using Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Successor of Azure Security Benchmark v3)
- MCR = Microsoft Container Registry
- MCRA = Microsoft Cybersecurity Reference Architectures
- MCU = Microprocessor Unit (integrated circuit that contains one or more CPUs and supporting electronics for general-purpose computing)
- MDFC = Microsoft Defender for Cloud
- MDP = Markov Decision Process
- MDT = Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (to install Windows 11 from file shares)
- MDTI = Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence
- MDM = Master Data Management (for a single source of truth about critical corporate data)
- MDM = Mobile Device Management (for security)
- MDW = Modern Data Warehouse (Microsoft)
- MDR = Managed Detection and Response (for security)
- MDX = Multidimensional Expressions (multi-axis formula language for Microsoft SSAS to retrieve OLAP cubes)
- MEF = Mission Essential Functions
- MEI = Merit, Excellence, and Intelligence (anti DEI)
- MELT = Metrics + Errors + Traces + Logs (for Observability)
- MES = Manufacturing Execution System (track material movement through the shop floor)
- MFA = Multi-Factor Authentication (security)
- MFS = Mutable File System (to read and write files on web3 IPFS)
- MGT = Microsoft Graph Toolkit (to read the Outlook calendars and log of actions by each Microsoft user)
- MHA = Multi-Head Attention (traditional mechanism to MQA in transformers where the model jointly attend to information from different representation subspaces)
- MIG = Managed Instance Group (for autoscaling within Google Cloud)
- MIP = Microsoft Information Protection (sensitivity labels)
- MIT = Most Important Task
- MitC = Man-in-the-Cloud (performed by abusing cloud file synchronization services such as Google Drive or DropBox for Data compromise, command and control (C&C), data exfiltration, and remote access)
- 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)
- MISP = Malware Information Sharing Platform (open-source threat intelligence platform)
- ML = Machine Learning
- M-LAG = Multi-chassis Link AGgregation (synchronization protocols over a peer control link to enable multiple switches to aggregate links, for redundancy and load balancing, improving network performance and reliability*)
- MLDR = Machine Learning Detection and Response
- MLM = Masked Language Model (such as BERT for Natural Language Processing)
- MLLP = Minimal Lower Layer Protocol (the leading and trailing delimiter HL7v2 healthcare data is transmitted using TCP/IP within VPNs)
- MMU = Memory Management Unit (to manage VM memory)
- MNC = Multi-National Corporation
- MNO = Mobile Network Operator (ATT, Verizon, T-Mobile)
- MOD = Manager on Duty (incident manager - security and hospitality industry)
- MoE = Mixture of Experts (in AI, Transformer for longer context)
- MOSFET = Metal Oxide Field Effect Transitor
- MPC = Model Predictive Control
- MPLS = Multiprotocol Label Switching (WAN service provider between Layer 2 and Layer 3 that forwards traffic based on short label-switched paths instead of traditional IP lookups at every hop, for predictable paths, QoS, and VPN services between sites)
- MPP = Massively Parallel Processing (on databases)
- MQA = Multi-Query Attention (a transformer encoding, used by PaLM and Falcon, that uses less memory and bandwidth than MHA, without sacrificing accuracy, by shareing Keys and Values across all heads but keeps separate transformations for each Query)
- MRO = Method Resolution Order (in Python multiple inheritance hierarchy using C3 linearization algorithm which uses the method from the first parent class in the inheritance list)
- 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)
- MOSFET = Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transitor
- MSI = Microsoft Software Installer (file extension for Microsoft Windows installer files)
- MTD = Maximum Tolerable Downtime
- MQTT = MQ Telemetry Transport
- MSAL = Microsoft Authentication Libraries
- MSD = Most Significant Digit
- MSE = Mean Squared Error (to calculate the accuracy of a regression model)
- MSK = Managed Streaming for Kafka (AWS using Apache)
- MSP = Managed Service Provider
- MSSP = Managed Security Service Provider (A provider of outsourced SOC services)
- MTA = Mail Transfer Agent
- MTBF = Mean Time Between Failures
- MTTA = Mean Time To Acknowledge
- MTTD = Mean Time To Detect (anomaly)
- MTTI = Mean Total Time of Impact (to operations)
- MTTR = Mean Time To Restore/Remediate
- MTU = Maximum Transmission Unit (networking)
- MVP = Minimum Viable Product
- MVP = Most Valuable Professional (Microsoft)
- MY = Multi-Year
- MVNO = Mobile Virtual Network Operator
- MYOB = Mind Your Own Business (internet slang)
N
- NA = Not Applicable
- NA = North America (United States)
- NAC = Network Access Control
- NAC = Network Admission Control/Controller (Cisco)
- NAD = Network Access Devices
- NAS = Network Attach Storage (device)
- 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
- NER = Named Entity Recognition (identifying and extracting names of persons, organizations, locations, dates from text and media)
- NeRF = Neural Radiance Fields (for generating 3D content from 2D images)
- NHI = Non-Human Identities (security)
- NDI = National Defense Information (classified secrets)
- NDRR = Net Dollar Retention Rate
- NER = Named Entity Recognition (AI)
- NFR = Non-Functional Requirements
- NFS = Network File System
- NFT = Non-fungible Tokens (currently defined as investments rather than consumer goods)
- NFV = Network Function Virtualization
- NGC = NVIDIA GPU Cloud
- 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 = Network Interface Card
- NIM = NVIDIA Inference Microservices
- NISQ = Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (device)
- NIST = National Institute of Standards and Technology (US)
- NKI = Neuron Kernel Interface (custom kernel for AWS Neuron SDK)
- NLB = Network Load Balancer (Amazon)
- NLP = Natural Language Processing (interaction between computers and human language such as Alexa and Google Assistant)
- NLU = Natural Language Understanding (Alexa & Generative AI)
- NN = Neural Network
- NOC = Network Operations Center
- NoSQL = (Nonrelational database system such as key-value pair document storage in DynamoDB)
- NPD = Non-Production (vs PRD for production in keeping with a consistent number of letters)
- NPS = Net Promoter Score (rating by customers willing to promote to others)
- NPU = Neural Processing Unit (specialized for processing AI neural networks in parallel, especially on edge/hand-held devices and on Microft’s AI laptops)
- NSA = National Security Agency (conducts SIGINT)
- NSFET = Nanosheet Field-Effect Transistor
- NSFW = Not Safe For Work (slang one should avoid repeating)
- 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
- NUI = Natural User Interface
- NUMA = Non-Uniform Memory Access (optimization enables AI runtimes to keep tensors close to the accelerator and cut back on data copying)
- NVIDIA = (the corporation which produces GPUs for AI and graphics)
- NVMe = Non-Volatile Memory Express (protocol to connect SSDs to the CPU via high-speed PCIe bus)
O
- o11y = Observability (numeronym - 11 letters between o and y)
- O3DE = Open 3D Engine (open-source 3D game development engine from Amazon. Successor to Amazon Lumberyard)
- OAC = Origin Access Control (for AWS CloudFront)
- OAI = OpenAI (Microsoft’s partner in AI ChatGPT)
- OAI = Origin Access Identity (virtual identity used to require users to access content via AWS CloudFront URl instead of S3 URL)
- OASIS = Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (defined CSAF and CVRF)
- OCI = Container Open Initiative (to replace Docker Compose and Docker containers)
- OCSP = Online Certificate Status Protocol
- OCM = Organizational Change Management
- ODNI = Office of the Director of National Intelligence
- OECD = Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (published trans-border privacy guidelines in 1980)
- OEE = Overall Equipment Effectiveness (the percentage metric of making only good parts as fast as possible (Good Count x Ideal Cycle Time) / Planned Production Time. OEE OEE does not provide information about loss-related factors in the preferred metric consisting of Availability, Performance, and Quality)
- OEL = Oracle Enterprise Linux
- OEM = Original Equipment Manufacturer
- OEP = Occupant Emergency Plan
- OFDM = Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (method of digital modulation of data in which a signal, at a chosen frequency, is split into multiple carrier frequencies at right angles to each other)
- OG = Original Gangster (slang to praise someone as exceptional, authentic, or old-school)
- OIDC = OpenID Connect
- OKR = Objectives and Key Results
- OODA = Observe Orient Decide Act (decision making sequence used by US Air Force for agility)
- OOM = Orders Of Magnatude (where 10x = 1 OOM)
- OLA = Observe - Orient - Decide - Act (acrostic for the rapid decision-making strategy used by US fighter pilots during aerial combat)
- 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
- OMS = Operations Management Suite (Microsoft product for datacenter administration)
- OOM = Out of Memory
- 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)
- ORC = Optimized Row Columnar (data format used within Apache Hadoop databases)
- ORM = Object-Relational Mapping (to simplify interaction between OOP CRUD apps and SQL databases)
- OOS = Out of Stock (when a retail store is out of inventory to sell of an item)
- OOV = Out-Of-Vocabulary (words or terms that a LLM has not encountered during its training phase)
- 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 (from social media)
- OSS = Open Source Software
- OT = Operational Technology
- OTA = Over The Air
- OTCSA = Operational Technology Cyber Security Alliance
- OTF = Open Table Formats (industry standard used by Delta Lake, Apache Iceberg, Hudi for versioned object storage)
- OTOH = On the Other Hand (chat slang)
- OTP = One-Time Password (for security)
- OTR = Off The Record (privacy)
- OVAL = Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language
- OU = Organizational Unit
- OUI = Organizational Unique Identifier (The first three bytes of the six-byte field of the MAC address the IEEE identifies as vendor of the network adapter)
- OWA = Outlook Web Application (Microsoft Exchange web interface)
- OWASP = Open Web Application Security Project
P
- P2P = Person to Person or Point to Point
- PaC = Policy as Code
- PaaS = Platform as a Service
- PaLM = Pathways Language Model (built based on Google’s Pathways system as a dense decoder-only transformer LLM with 540 billion parameters for a wide range of AI tasks including reasoning, natural language understanding, text generation, multi-step logical inference reasoning, arithmetic, code generation, and translation)
- PAM = Privileged Access Management
- PAN = Primary Account Number (PCI DSS)
- PAP = Permissible Actions Protocol (defines actions to avoid attackers detecting investigation - RED for non-detectable actions, AMBER for passive, GREEN for active, WHITE for no restrictions)
- PASTA = Process for Attack Simulation and Threat Analysis
- PAT = Personal Access Token (to authenticate GitHub static access)
- PAT = Port Address Translation (networking)
- PAW = Privileged Access Workstation (Microsoft)
- PAYG = Pay-As-You-Go (such as for cloud services billing)
- PBC = Printed Control Board
- PBC = Provided By Client (SOC term)
- PBC = Public Benefit Corporation (where mission overrides shareholder interests)
- PBL = Project-Based Learning
- PC = Personal Computer (refers to a Microsoft Windows machine)
- PCA = Principal Component Analysis (dimensionality reduction algorithm that identifies the hyperplane variance closest to the data to project data onto it)
- PCI = Peripheral Components Interconnect
- PCI DSS = Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (private regulation by credit card processors to prevent identity theft)
- PCIe = Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (bus to connect solid-state drives directly to the CPU)
- PDCA = Plan Do Check Act (created by Deming to iterate improvement, adopted for Agile development)
- PDD = Project Delivery Document (containing IS project scope prerequisites scheduling info etc.)
- PDF = Portable Document Format (the format created by Adobe to create a universally accessible file containing graphics and text)
- PDM = Product Data Management (aka version control of CAD and other data for branching & merging)
- PDW = Parallel Data Warehouse (Microsoft SQL 2012 Analytics Platform System that became Azure SQL Data Warehouse)
- PE = Pre-installed Environment (a bootable image of Microsoft Windows used to automate install)
- PEFT = Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (techniques such as LoRA to update a small subset of an AI ML model’s parameters)
- PEM = Privacy Enhanced Mail (AWS private key certificate encoding file type)
- PEP = Python Enhancement Proposal
- 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)
- PF = Privacy Framework
- PFAS = Per- and polyfluoroalkyl Substances (carcinogenic forever chemicals)
- PFS = Perfect Forward Secrecy
- PHD = Personal Health Dashboard
- PHE = Partially Homomorphic Encryption
- 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)
- PIA = Privacy Impact Assessment
- PID = Process Identifier
- PID = Proportional Integral Derivative (keeps a variable within a set of parameters/conditions, such as auto cruise control)
- PII = Personally Identifiable Information
- PIM = Privileged Identity Management
- PIN = Personal Identification Number (a secret consisting of a small number)
- PIO = Programmable Input Output (An Arduino feature to create hardware interfaces using GP IO pins)
- PIOPS = Provisioned Input Output Operations Per Second
- PIR = Passive Infra-Red (electronic sensor)
- PIV = Personal Identity Verification (uses tokens like YubiKeys)
- PKE = Public Key Encryption
- PKI = Public Key Infrastructure (manages cryptographic certificates)
- PM = Product Management/Manager
- PLA = Polyactic Acid (filament for 3D printing. Made from organic materials. Has low melting point and absorbs moisture.)
- PLC = Programmable Logic Controller
- P&L = Profit and Loss
- PMM = Product Marketing Manager (organizational role)
- PMO = Program Management Office
- PMS = Pantone Matching System (to select colors)
- PNAC = Port-Based Network Attack
- POA&M = Plan of Action and Milestones
- PoC = Proof of Concept
- POGIL = Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning
- POLP = Principle of Least Privilege
- POM = Production Operations Management
- POR = Process of Record
- PPE = Personal Protective Equipment
- PPE = Poisoned Pipeline Execution (of CI/CD pipeline configuration files such as Jenkinsfile, .gitlab-ci.yml, makefile, etc.)
- PPE = Pre-Production Enviornment
- 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)
- PPO = Proximal Policy Optimization (A reinforcement learning algorithm that improves training stability and reliability)
- PPTP = Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol
- PQC = Post-Quantum Cryptography (encryption resistant to crackers on fast quantum computers)
- PR = Pull Request (GitHub feature for suggesting code changes and integrating them into the main code base)
- PRD = Production (vs NPD for non-production in keeping with a consistent number of letters)
- PS = Professional Services
- PSD = Power Spectral Density (for vibration spectrum analysis)
- PSE = Professional Services Engineer
- PSIRT = Product Security Incident Response Team (protects customers of products)
- PSK = Pre-Shared Key
- PTA = Pass-Through Authentication (agents in Microsoft Azure AD Connect)
- PTAL = Please Take A Look
- PTES = Penetration Testing Execution Standard
- PTT = Platform Trust Technology (on Intel chips for Windows PCs)
- PTZ = Pan-Tilt-Zoom (Cameras)
- PUA = Potentially Unwanted Application
- PV = Persistent Volume (Kubernetes)
- PV = Paravirtual Virtualization (type of Linux AMI boot loader)
- PVM = Python Virtual Machine
- PVC = Persistent Volume Claim (Kubernetes)
- PWA = Progressive Web Application (application intended to work on any platform with a standards-compliant browser, including desktop and mobile devices)
- PWC = Price Waterhouse Coopers (International Global Integrator Consulting firm)
- PWM = Pulse Widthe Modulation
Q
- QA = Quality Assurance
- QBR = Quarterly Business Review
- QEC = Quantum Error Correction (IT)
- QFT = Quantum Field Theory (combines quantum mechanics, special relativity, and classical field theory to describe the mechanics of higher dimensional math)
- QIR = Quantum Intermediate Representation (Microsoft)
- QKD = Quantum Key Distribution (secures communication using a cryptographic protocol involving quantum computing with lasers)
- QLDB = Quantum Ledger Database (AWS)
- QML = Quantum Ledger Database (Microsoft)
- QoQ = Quarter on Quarter
- QoS = Quality of Service
- QPU = Query Processing Unit (to bill CPU capacity in Microsoft Azure Analytics Services)
- QPU = Quantum Processing Unit (Quantum IT)
R
- RACI = Responsible + Accountable + Consulted + Informed (Responsibility Assignment Matrix)
- RAD = Rapid Application Development (methodology)
- RAG = Retrieval Augmented Generation (extension such as PostgreSQL pgvector to add proprietary knowledge to foundation models without retraining)
- RAID = Redundant Array of Independent Disks
- RAM = Random Access Memory
- RAM = Resource Access Manager (AWS)
- RAN = Radio Access Network
- RASP = Runtime Application Self-Protection
- RAT = Remote Access Trojan (malware)
- RBAC = Role-Based Access Control
- RBG = Random Bit Generator
- RBVM = Risk-Based Vulnerability Management
- RCA = Root Cause Analysis
- RCS = Rich Communication Services (messaging, voice, video)
- RCE = Remote Code Execution
- RCE = Root Code Execution
- RDD = Resilient Distributed Dataset (native data structure underlying Apache Spark Dataframes used by Pandas)
- RDF = Resource Description Language (W3C standard for graph databases)
- RDL = Report Definition Language (XML representation of a paginated report definition from Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services)
- RDMA = Remote Direct Memory Access (to share liquid-cooled memory in parallel connected by low-latency Ethernet fabric by SMCI)
- 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)
- ReALM = Reference Resolution As Language Modeling (Apple’s approach to language modeling powering Apple Intelligence)
- REST = Representational State Transfer
- REEs = Rare Earths Elements (mining and processing, mostly in China, for minerals needed in modern electronics)
- RFI = Request for Information
- RFP = Request for Proposal
- RFQ = Request for Quote
- RGB = Red Green Blue (colors)
- RGDD = Reliable Group Data Delivery (SDN)
- RRA = Rapid Risk Assessment (NIST)
- RIP = Rest In Peace
- RISC = Reduced Instruction Set Computing
- RLAIF = Reinforcement Learning with AI/LLM Feedback (Anthropic’s Constitutional AI)
- RLHF = Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (to fine-tune ML rates after initial training)
- RLS = Row-Level Security (in SQL database tables)
- ReLU = Rectified Linear Unit (in Artificial Intelligence)
- RMF = Risk Management Framework (for controls defined in NIST SP 800-53)
- RMM = Remote Monitoring and Management (utilities)
- RMSE = Root Mean Squared Error (to calculate the accuracy of a regression model)
- RNG = Random Number Generator
- RNN = Recurrent Neural Network (in Deep Learning)
- ROA = Return on Assets
- ROC = Report on Compliance (issued by DCS PSI auditors)
- ROE = Return on Equity
- RoHS = Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (EU Feb 2003)
- ROI = Return on Investment
- ROIC = Return on Invested Capital
- ROM = Read-only Memory
- ROS = Return on Sales
- ROSA = Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (containers)
- RoT = Root of Trust
- ROUGE = Recall-Oriented Understudy for Gisting Evaluation (metrics for evaluating automatic summarization and machine translation)
- 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 name based on the initials of its inventors)
- RSS = Real Simple Syndication (web feed format)
- RSVP = répondez s’il vous plaît (French for Respond Please - an initialism where each letter is pronounced)
- RTC = Real Time Clock
- RTFM = Read The Fine Manual (slang)
- RTO = Recovery Time Objective
- RTOS = Real-Time Operating System (for IoT/Edge Computing)
- RTSP = Real-Time Streaming Protocol (AWS Kinesis)
- RUM = Resources Under Management (HashiCorp Terraform at scale)
- RUP = Rational Unified Process (phased software development methodology from 2003 using object UML)
- RaMP = Rapid Modernization Plan (Microsoft Zero Trust)
S
- S3 = Simple Storage Service (AWS file object service)
- SaaS = Software as a Service
- SAIF = Secure AI Framework (Google)
- 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
- SAS = Shared Access Signature (secure token URI to Azure accounts and storage resources)
- SASE = Secure Access Service Edge (Microsoft & Trust Broker SaaS by Palo Alto Prisma zScaler Cato Cloudfare)
- SAST = Static Application Security Testing
- SBC = Single-Board Computer (like the ZimaBoard 832)
- SBI = Service-Based Interface
- SBOM = Software Bill of Materials
- SCA = Software Composition Analysis (identify vulnerable components in containers)
- SCADA = Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition
- SCAP = Security Content Automation Protocol
- SCC = Security Command Center (Google’s SOC service)
- SCEP = Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol
- SCF = Secure Controls Framework (SEC)
- SCIM = System for Cross-Domain Identity Management (IT security)
- SCM = Source Control Manager (such as GitHub)
- SCP = Service Control Policy (in AWS to govern the use of other IAM policies)
- SCRM = Cyber Supply Chain Risk Management (defined by NIST)
- SCSS = Sidecar Container Security Stack
- SCT = Schema Conversion Tool (AWS)
- SDD = Spec Driven Development (Vibe coding Kiro and Spec Kit platform from GitHub)
- SDE = Standardized Development Environment
- SDK = Software Development Kit
- SDL = Schema Definition Language (in GraphQL)
- 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)
- SDR = Single Data Rate (memory)
- SDRAM = Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory
- SDP = Software Defined Perimeter
- SDP = Software Delivery Platform
- SEB = Secure Enterprise Browsers
- SEC = Security and Exchange Commission (regulates US financial markets)
- SERP = Search Engine Results Page
- SES = Simple Email Service (AWS)
- SEU = Single Event Upset (a soft error caused by a random alpha particle flipping a bit)
- SF = Service Fabric (Azure)
- SFC = Sequential Function Charts
- SFT = Supervised Fine Tuning (a pre-trained model on labeled data for a specific task)
- SG = Security Group
- SGD = Stochastic Gradient Descent (AI technique to iteratively optimize)
- 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
- SIGINT = Signals Intelligence (of electronic transmissions)
- SIMD = Single Instruction, Multiple Data (parallel processing technique)
- SIP = Session Initiation Protocol (real-time multimedia communication sessions over IP networks)
- SIRP = Security Incident Response Plan (for SOC2)
- SIRT = Security Incident Response Team (work in a SOC department)
- SIS = Safety Instrumented System (automated control system that safeguards manufacturing environment in case of any hazardous incident in the industry)
- SKSKSKSK = (internet slang expressing excitement)
- SLA = Service Level Agreement
- SLAM = Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (of image file contents by OpenCV)
- SLE = Single Loss Expectancy
- SLI = Service Level Indicator
- SLM = Small Language Model
- SLO = Service Level Objective
- SLR = Service Linked Role (in IAM for Amazon Lightsail)
- SLSA = Supply chain Levels for Software Artifacts (framework of standards and controls for a secure supply chain to build secure resilient software)
- SMB = Server Message Block (storage)
- SMB = Small or Mid-sized Business
- SME = Subject Matter Expert
- SMF = Session Management Function
- SNDL = Store Now Decrypt Later (for malicious decryption when quantum enables it)
- 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
- SoC = System on a Chip
- SOC2 = Systems and Organization Controls (AICPA ISO 27701)
- SOP = Standard Operating Procedure
- SORN = System of Record Notice
- SOTA = State of the Art
- SOX = Sarbanes-Oxley Act
- SPA = Single Page Application
- SPF = Sender Policy Framework (lists IP address of servers allowed to send email for a domain - for email authentication)
- SPI = Service Provider Interface
- SPI = Secure Personal Information
- SPI = Serial Peripheral Interface (master/slave protocol that requires a clock signal to transmit any 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)
- SPK = Spacecraft and Planet Kernel (files from NASA containing ephemeris data for solar system bodies, spacecraft, and other objects)
- SPOC = Single Point of Contact
- SPOF = Single Point of Failure
- SPLK = Splunk’s stock ticker symbol
- SPN = Service Principal Name (Unique identifier for a service instance within Kerberos)
- SPSCR = Security, Privacy, and Supply Chain Risks (in RMF)
- SPAN Port = Port configured to receive a copy of every packet that passes through a switch.
- SQL = Structured Query Language
- SQS = Simple Queue Service (AWS hosted queues of messages)
- SRA = Security Reference Architecture
- SRE = Site Reliability Engineer (job role)
- SRG = Security Requirements Guides (general guidelines for STIGs, from DISA)
- SRP = Single Responsibility Principle
- SRTM = Software Requirements Traceability Matrix
- SRUM = System Resource Utilization Monitor (on Windows machines)
- SSAE = Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements
- SSAS = SQL Server Analysis Services (from Microsoft)
- SSD = Solid-State Drive (data storage)
- SSE = Server-Sent Events (A one-way channel from server to client. The client subscribes to a stream of events, and the server continuously sends updates as text-based messages.)
- SSDT = SQL Server Data Tools (Microsoft SQL Server)
- SSE = Security Service Edge (Microsoft conditional access mechanisms for Zero Trust)
- SSE = Server Sent Events (machine-level protocol used between MCP components)
- SSE = Server-Side Encryption
- SSG = Static Site Generator
- 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)
- SSML = Speech Synthesis Markup Language
- SSMS = SQL Server Management Studio (Microsoft app)
- SSN = Social Security Number (issued by the US government to unique identify an individual for taxes)
- SSO = Single Sign On (IAM MFA)
- SSoT = Single Source of Truth
- SSP = System Security Plan
- SSPR = Self-Service Password Reset (Security)
- SSRF = Server Side Request Forgery
- SSRM = Shared Security Responsibility Model
- SSRS = SQL Server Reporting Services (Microsoft)
- STA = State of The Art (most modern)
- STAR = Security Test Audit Report
- STIG = Security Technical Implementation Guide (specific to each product used by DoD, from DISA)
- STIX = Structured Threat Information eXpression (XML API to share threat models by OASIS)
- STRIDE = Spoofing of user identity; Tampering; Repudiation; Information disclosure (privacy breach or data leak); Denial of service (DoS); Elevation of privilege
- SLD = Secondary Level Domain (the letters before the last dot on URLs processed by DNS)
- STS = Security Token Service (AWS)
- STS = StatefulSets (Kubernetes)
- SUT = System Under Test
- SVD = Singular Value Decomposition (standard matrix factorization NumPy function to decompose training set)
- 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
- TAED = Target Actual Efficiency Downtime
- 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)
- TBH = To Be Honest (Gen Z slang)
- TCB = Trusted Computing Base (secure boot kernel and other isolation tech)
- TCC = Trusted Cloud Computing (Microsoft)
- TCC = Transparency, Consent, and Control (for user data protection within Apple OS)
- TCO = Total Cost of Ownership
- TDE = Transparent Data Encryption (encrypt database without altering app interactions by substituting encrypted values in the background outside apps)
- TDIR = Threat Detection and Incident Response (security workflow)
- TDP = Thermal Design Power (avg. max. power a processor dissipates heat while running)
- TDM = Technical Decision Maker (vs. Business Decision Maker)
- TEE = Trusted Execution Environments (to provide secure runtime)
- TFC = Terraform Cloud (SaaS Terraform offering)
- TFE = Terraform Enterprise (self-installed/managed Terraform)
- TFW = The Feeling When
- TIA = Thanks In Advance (chat slang)
- TIC = Trusted Internet Connection
- TIN = Tax Identification Number
- TIP = Threat Intelligence Platform
- TIPS = Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (BLOG)
- TCSEC = Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria
- TCO = Total Cost of Ownership
- TDD = Test-Driven Development
- TDM = Technical Decision Maker
- TDS = Tabular Data Stream (network protocol for communication between Microsoft SQL Server and its clients)
- TEEP = Total Effective Equipment Performance (the actual percentage of calendar hour asset utilization versus theoretical 24x365 maximum)
- TEMPEST = (not an acronym for analyzing unshielded equipment emissions to steal information) pdf
- TFE = Terraform Enterprise
- TLP = Traffic Light Protocol (defines levels of information sharing with contractors - CLEAR, GREEN, AMBER, RED)
- TTFN = Ta Ta For Now (chat)
- 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)
- TLDR = Too Long Don’t Read
- 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
- TOML = Tom’s Obvious Minimal Language (config text file format)
- TOON = Token-Oriented Object Notation (more compact than JSON for reading by models)
- TOPI = Tensor Operator Inventory (pre-defined templates of common tensor operators e.g., conv2d, transpose)
- TOPS = Tera Operations per Second (AI inference performance)
- TOTP = Time-based One Time Password
- TPISRM = Third Party Information Security Risk Management
- TPM = Trusted Platform Module (on newer Microsoft Windows PCs)
- TPRM = Third Party Risk Management
- TSC = Trust Service Criteria
- TSI = Trustworthy Software Initiative (UK)
- TTE = Trusted Execution Environments (Microsoft Azure)
- TTL = Time To Live
- TTP = Trusted Third Party
- TTP = Tactics + Techniques + Procedures (of security attack)
- TTS = Text To Speech
- TTT = Train the Trainer
- TTV = Time to Value (marketing term)
- TTX = TableTop eXercise (for security resilience)
- TUI = Text-based User Interface (Command Line Interface)
- TVM = Threat and Vulnerability Management (Microsoft)
- TVM = Tensor Virtual Machine (fast Apache Python Deep Learning compilation framework)
U
- U = yoU (chat slang)
- UAC = User Account Control (on Windows)
- UAT = User Acceptance Test
- UART = Universal Asynchronous Receiver / Transmitter (protocol)
- UCS = User
- UDF = User-Defined Function
- UDM = Unified Data Management
- UDR = User-Defined Routes (used by Azure)
- UDS = Unified Diagnostic Services (use in vehicles)
- UDT = User-defined Data Types
- 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
- UNS = Unified Namespace (for MQTT to integrate IIoT components)
- 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
- USDC = US Dollar Coin (digital stablecoin backed 1:1 with USD such as BitPay Card)
- USP = Unique Selling Proposition
- UTC = Coordinated Universal Time (the new compromise term for GMT)
- UTF = Unicode Transformation Format
- UUID = Universally Unique Identifier (to identify information objects)
- UVM = Unified Vulnerability Management (Armorcode: aggregate, correlate and prioritize findings from security tools)
- UX = User eXperience
V
- v12n = Virtualization (numeronym of 11 letters between v and n)
- VAE = Variational Autoencoders (uses encoder-decoder architecture to generate new data for image and video generation)
- VADER = Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner (A lexicon that includes informal words used for sentiment analysis to determine emotional negativity)
- VAR = Value-Added Reseller
- VAT = Value-Added Tax
- VBO = Value-Based Outcome
- VCDM = Verifiable Credentials Data Model v2.0 (W3C Candidate Recommendation 2024 defines a schema for issuing, exchanging, and verifying credentials in a decentralized ecosystem using cryptographic primitives such as JSON-LD proofs and JWT-based verifiable presentations)
- VCS = Version Control System
- VDI = Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (from Citrix, Microsoft, AWS, etc. to share desktop infrastructure)
- VDP = Vulnerability Disclosure Program
- VEX = Vulnerability Exploitability Exchange
- VGW = Virtual Gateway (Amazon AWS)
- VHD = Virtual Hard Drive (holds Page Blobs in Azure Storage of up to 8TB in size)
- VIF = Virtual InterFace (networking)
- VIM = Virtualized Infrastructure Manager (AWS)
- VIP = Virtual IP (address)
- VLAN = Virtual Local Area Network
- VM = Virtual Machine
- VMC = Verified Mark Certificate (anti-spoofing logo validation DMARC from DigiCert)
- 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)
- VDP = Vulnerability Disclosure Policy (CISA Pledge)
- VLM = Vision-Language Model (AI models that jointly understand and generate both visual and language data)
- VPN = Virtual Private Network
- VRF = Virtual Routing and Forwarding (a way to run multiple, completely separate routing tables on the same network device so that traffic from different “tenants” or environments is isolated at Layer 3, similar to how VLANs isolate at Layer 2.)
- VRP = Vulnerability Research Program (way for organizations to receive security vulnerabilities found)
- VSM = Value Stream Mapping
- VSTS = Visual Studio Team Services (Microsoft)
- VTA = Versatile Tensor Accelerator (an extension of Apache TVM)
- VTFET = Vertical Transport Field Effect Transitor (IBM)
- VTOC = Volatile Organic Compounds
- VTL = Virtual Tape Library
- vTPM = Virtual Trusted Platform Module
- VUI = Voice User Interface (Amazon Alexa & Google Home)
- VUCA = Volatile + Uncertain + Complex + Ambiguous
- VXLAN = Virtual Extensible Local Area Network (enables scalability)
W
- w/o = without (common vernacular)
- W3C = World Wide Web Consortium (defines standards for JavaScript, HTML, XML, RDF, OWL, etc.)å
- 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
- WAL = Write-Ahead Log
- WAN = Wide Area Network
- Wasm = WebAssembly (binary instruction coding for a stack-based virtual machine in browsers)
- WBS = Work Breakdown Structure
- WDYM = What Do You Mean? (chat slang)
- WEP = Wired Equivalent Privacy (mobile security)
- WFA = Work From Anywhere
- WFH = Work From Home
- WIP = Work In Process
- WMI = Windows Management Instrumentation (Microsoft)
- WMS = Warehouse Management System
- WoL = Wake-on-LAN (BIOS/UEFI setting so device can save battery yet be worken from sleep from a static IP address)
- WOT = Web of Trust (security)
- WPA = Wi-Fi Protected Access
- WPF = Windows Presentation Foundation (Microsoft)
- WS = Workspace
- WSDL = Web Services Description Language
- WSFC = Windows Server Failover Clustering/Cluster (Microsft)
- WTF = What The F*ck (internet slang)
- WVD = Windows Virtual Desktop (Microsoft VDI was rebranded to Azure Virtual Desktop)
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
- XOR = Exclusive-Or (Assembly language instruction and symmetric encryption algorithm)
Y
- YAML = YAML Ain’t Markup Language (Human-readable data-serialization text format)
- YMMV = Your Mileage May Vary (chat slang)
- YOLO = You Only Live Once (slang)
- YTD = Year-To-Date
Z
- ZKP = Zero-Knowledge Proof (cryptographic protocols where a prover demonstrates knowledge of a secret to a verifier without disclosing the actual secret or other information)
- ZOPA = Zone Of Possible Agreement (in a negotiation)
- ZRS = Zone-Redundant Storage (across 3 Azure Availability Zones)
- ZT = Zero Trust
- ZTA = Zero Trust Architecture
- ZTDA = Zero Trust Data Access
- ZTNA = Zero Trust Network Access/Architecture
- ZTS = Zero Trust Security
Other Glossaries provide definitions:
- VIDEO of acronyms takes 21 minutes
- https://www.acronymfinder.com/
- https://tryhackme.com/r/glossary
- https://www.edglossary.org/
- https://github.com/mikepound/tls-exercises/blob/master/glossary.pdf
- https://docs.aws.amazon.com/glossary/latest/reference/glos-chap.html
26-03-18 v099 HDM def :acronyms.md created 2024-12-28