Security+ Certification/Acronyms

Acronyms that may be found on the exam.
Acronym Full name
AAA Authentication, Authorization, and

Accounting

ACL Access Control List
AES Advanced Encryption Standard
AES-256 Advanced Encryption Standards 256-bit
AH Authentication Header
AI Artificial Intelligence
AIS Automated Indicator Sharing
ALE Annualized Loss Expectancy
AP Access Point
API Application Programming Interface
APT Advanced Persistent Threat
ARO Annualized Rate of Occurrence
ARP Address Resolution Protocol
ASLR Address Space Layout Randomization
ATT&CK Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and

Common Knowledge

AUP Acceptable Use Policy
AV Antivirus
BASH Bourne Again Shell
BCP Business Continuity Planning
BGP Border Gateway Protocol
BIA Business Impact Analysis
BIOS Basic Input/Output System
BPA Business Partners Agreement
BPDU Bridge Protocol Data Unit
BYOD Bring Your Own Device
CA Certificate Authority
CAPTCHA Completely Automated Public Turing Test to

Tell Computers and Humans Apart

CAR Corrective Action Report
CASB Cloud Access Security Broker
CBC Cipher Block Chaining
CCMP Counter Mode/CBC-MAC Protocol
CCTV Closed-circuit Television
CERT Computer Emergency Response Team
CFB Cipher Feedback
CHAP Challenge Handshake Authentication

Protocol

CIA Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability
CIO Chief Information Officer
CIRT Computer Incident Response Team
CMS Content Management System
COOP Continuity of Operation Planning
COPE Corporate Owned, Personally Enabled
CP Contingency Planning
CRC Cyclical Redundancy Check
CRL Certificate Revocation List
CSO Chief Security Officer
CSP Cloud Service Provider
CSR Certificate Signing Request
CSRF Cross-site Request Forgery
CSU Channel Service Unit
CTM Counter Mode
CTO Chief Technology Officer
CVE Common Vulnerability Enumeration
CVSS Common Vulnerability Scoring System
CYOD Choose Your Own Device
DAC Discretionary Access Control
DBA Database Administrator
DDoS Distributed Denial of Service
DEP Data Execution Prevention
DES Digital Encryption Standard
DHCP Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
DHE Diffie-Hellman Ephemeral
DKIM DomainKeys Identified Mail
DLL Dynamic Link Library
DLP Data Loss Prevention
DMARC Domain Message Authentication Reporting

and Conformance

DNAT Destination Network Address Translation
DNS Domain Name System
DoS Denial of Service
DPO Data Privacy Officer
DRP Disaster Recovery Plan
DSA Digital Signature Algorithm
DSL Digital Subscriber Line
EAP Extensible Authentication Protocol
ECB Electronic Code Book
ECC Elliptic Curve Cryptography
ECDHE Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman Ephemeral
ECDSA Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm
EDR Endpoint Detection and Response
EFS Encrypted File System
ERP Enterprise Resource Planning
ESN Electronic Serial Number
ESP Encapsulated Security Payload
FACL File System Access Control List
FDE Full Disk Encryption
FIM File Integrity Management
FPGA Field Programmable Gate Array
FRR False Rejection Rate
FTP File Transfer Protocol
FTPS Secured File Transfer Protocol
GCM Galois Counter Mode
GDPR General Data Protection Regulation
GPR GNU Privacy Guard
GPO Group Policy Object
GPS Global Positioning System
GPU Graphics Processing Unit
GRE Generic Routing Encapsulation
HA High Availability
HDD Hard Disk Drive
HIDS Host-based Intrusion Detection System
HIPS Host-based Intrusion Prevention System
HMAC Hashed Message Authentication Code
HOTP HMAC-based One-time Password
HSM Hardware Security Module
HTML Hypertext Markup Language
HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol
HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure
HVAC Heating, Ventilation Air Conditioning
IaaS Infrastructure as a Service
IaC Infrastructure as Code
IAM Identity and Access Management
ICMP Internet Control Message Protocol
ICS Industrial Control Systems
IDEA International Data Encryption Algorithm
IDF Intermediate Distribution Frame
IdP Identity Provider
IDS Intrusion Detection System
IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics

Engineers

IKE Internet Key Exchange
IM Instant Messaging
IMAP Internet Message Access Protocol
IoC Indicators of Compromise
IoT Internet of Things
IP Internet Protocol
IPS Intrusion Prevention System
IPSec Internet Protocol Security
IR Incident Response
IRC Internet Relay Chat
IRP Incident Response Plan
ISO International Standards Organization
ISP Internet Service Provider
ISSO Information Systems Security Officer
IV Initialization Vector
KDC Key Distribution Center
KEK Key Encryption Key
L2TP Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol
LAN Local Area Network
LDAP Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
LEAP Lightweight Extensible Authentication

Protocol

MaaS Monitoring as a Service
MAC Mandatory Access Control
MAC Media Access Control
MAC Message Authentication Code
MAN Metropolitan Area Network
MBR Master Boot Record
MD5 Message Digest 5
MDF Main Distribution Frame
MDM Mobile Device Management
MFA Multifactor Authentication
MFD Multifunction Device
MFP Multifunction Printer
ML Machine Learning
MMS Multimedia Message Service
MOA Memorandum of Agreement
MOU Memorandum of Understanding
MPLS Multi-protocol Label Switching
MSA Master Service Agreement
MSCHAP Microsoft Challenge Handshake

Authentication Protocol

MSP Managed Service Provider
MSSP Managed Security Service Provider
MTBF Mean Time Between Failures
MTTF Mean Time to Failure
MTTR Mean Time to Recover
MTU Maximum Transmission Unit
NAC Network Access Control
NAT Network Address Translation
NDA Non-disclosure Agreement
NFC Near Field Communication
NGFW Next-generation Firewall
NIDS Network-based Intrusion Detection System
NIPS Network-based Intrusion Prevention System
NIST National Institute of Standards & Technology
NTFS New Technology File System
NTLM New Technology LAN Manager
NTP Network Time Protocol
OAUTH Open Authorization
OCSP Online Certificate Status Protocol
OID Object Identifier
OS Operating System
OSINT Open-source Intelligence
OSPF Open Shortest Path First
OT Operational Technology
OTA Over the Air
OVAL Open Vulnerability Assessment Language
P12 PKCS #12
P2P Peer to Peer
PaaS Platform as a Service
PAC Proxy Auto Configuration
PAM Privileged Access Management
PAM Pluggable Authentication Modules
PAP Password Authentication Protocol
PAT Port Address Translation
PBKDF2 Password-based Key Derivation Function 2
PBX Private Branch Exchange
PCAP Packet Capture
PCI DSS Payment Card Industry Data Security

Standard

PDU Power Distribution Unit
PEAP Protected Extensible Authentication

Protocol

PED Personal Electronic Device
PEM Privacy Enhanced Mail
PFS Perfect Forward Secrecy
PGP Pretty Good Privacy
PHI Personal Health Information
PII Personally Identifiable Information
PIV Personal Identity Verification
PKCS Public Key Cryptography Standards
PKI Public Key Infrastructure
POP Post Office Protocol
POTS Plain Old Telephone Service
PPP Point-to-Point Protocol
PPTP Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol
PSK Pre-shared Key
PTZ Pan-tilt-zoom
PUP Potentially Unwanted Program
RA Recovery Agent
RA Registration Authority
RACE Research and Development in Advanced

Communications Technologies in Europe

RAD Rapid Application Development
RADIUS Remote Authentication Dial-in User Service
RAID Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks
RAS Remote Access Server
RAT Remote Access Trojan
RBAC Role-based Access Control
RBAC Rule-based Access Control
RC4 Rivest Cipher version 4
RDP Remote Desktop Protocol
RFID Radio Frequency Identifier
RIPEMD RACE Integrity Primitives Evaluation

Message Digest

ROI Return on Investment
RPO Recovery Point Objective
RSA Rivest, Shamir, & Adleman
RTBH Remotely Triggered Black Hole
RTO Recovery Time Objective
RTOS Real-time Operating System
RTP Real-time Transport Protocol
S/MIME Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail

Extensions

SaaS Software as a Service
SAE Simultaneous Authentication of Equals
SAML Security Assertions Markup Language
SAN Storage Area Network
SAN Subject Alternative Name
SASE Secure Access Service Edge
SCADA Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition
SCAP Security Content Automation Protocol
SCEP Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol
SD-WAN Software-defined Wide Area Network
SDK Software Development Kit
SDLC Software Development Lifecycle
SDLM Software Development Lifecycle

Methodology

SDN Software-defined Networking
SE Linux Security-enhanced Linux
SED Self-encrypting Drives
SEH Structured Exception Handler
SFTP Secured File Transfer Protocol
SHA Secure Hashing Algorithm
SHTTP Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol
SIEM Security Information and Event Management
SIM Subscriber Identity Module
SLA Service-level Agreement
SLE Single Loss Expectancy
SMS Short Message Service
SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
SMTPS Simple Mail Transfer Protocol Secure
SNMP Simple Network Management Protocol
SOAP Simple Object Access Protocol
SOAR Security Orchestration, Automation,

Response

SoC System on Chip
SOC Security Operations Center
SOW Statement of Work
SPF Sender Policy Framework
SPIM Spam over Internet Messaging
SQL Structured Query Language
SQLi SQL Injection
SRTP Secure Real-Time Protocol
SSD Solid State Drive
SSH Secure Shell
SSL Secure Sockets Layer
SSO Single Sign-on
STIX Structured Threat Information eXchange
SWG Secure Web Gateway
TACACS+ Terminal Access Controller Access Control

System

TAXII Trusted Automated eXchange of Indicator

Information

TCP/IP Transmission Control Protocol/Internet

Protocol

TGT Ticket Granting Ticket
TKIP Temporal Key Integrity Protocol
TLS Transport Layer Security
TOC Time-of-check
TOTP Time-based One-time Password
TOU Time-of-use
TPM Trusted Platform Module
TTP Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures
TSIG Transaction Signature
UAT User Acceptance Testing
UAV Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
UDP User Datagram Protocol
UEFI Unified Extensible Firmware Interface
UEM Unified Endpoint Management
UPS Uninterruptable Power Supply
URI Uniform Resource Identifier
URL Universal Resource Locator
USB Universal Serial Bus
USB OTG USB On the Go
UTM Unified Threat Management
UTP Unshielded Twisted Pair
VBA Visual Basic
VDE Virtual Desktop Environment
VDI Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
VLAN Virtual Local Area Network
VLSM Variable Length Subnet Masking
VM Virtual Machine
VoIP Voice over IP
VPC Virtual Private Cloud
VPN Virtual Private Network
VTC Video Teleconferencing
WAF Web Application Firewall
WAP Wireless Access Point
WEP Wired Equivalent Privacy
WIDS Wireless Intrusion Detection System
WIPS Wireless Intrusion Prevention System
WO Work Order
WPA Wi-Fi Protected Access
WPS Wi-Fi Protected Setup
WTLS Wireless TLS
XDR Extended Detection and Response
XML Extensible Markup Language
XOR Exclusive Or
XSRF Cross-site Request Forgery
XSS Cross-site Scripting