OMG! AAMOF I just found the OP and just LOL! SCNR!
Yup, we’ve all seen stuff like that and said: WHAT!? Did someone just sit on their keyboard or drop their smartphone from the top of a building?
Of course, these are called acronyms, which stems from the Latinacro, which means beginning, and onym, which means word. Acronyms have always been an integral part of computer vocabulary, but it’s easy to get lost in the jungle of letters, IYKWIM.
To help clear things up a little, we’ve created a list of acronyms that are often used in the IT world:
Authorities and Regulations
- NIST – National Institute of Standards and Technology
- DoD – Department of Defense
- CCIRC – Canadian Cyber Incidence Response Center
- IAPP – International Association of Privacy Professionals
- ISACA – Information Systems Audit and Control Association
- PCI DSS – Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard
- HIPAA – Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
- SOX – Sarbanes-Oxley Act
- GDPR – General Data Protection Regulation
- ISO – International Organization for Standardization
- IEEE – Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
- IETF – Internet Engineering Task Force
- ANSI – American National Standards Institute
Cryptography
- DES – Data Encryption Standard (legacy)
- AES – Advanced Encryption Standard
- HMAC – Keyed Message Authentication Code
- ECC – Elliptic Curve Cryptography
- DH(E) – Diffie-Hellman (Ephemeral)
- PFS – Perfect Forward Secrecy
- GCM – Galois Counter Mode
- CBC – Cipher Block Chaining
- ECB – Electronic CodeBook
- CTR – Counter
- OCB – Offset CodeBook
- XTS – Xor-encrypt-xor with CipherText Stealing
- PRNG – Pseudo-Random Number Generator
- IV – Initialization Vector
- PKCS – Public-Key Cryptography Standards
- XOR – eXclusive OR
- CPA – Chosen Plaintext Attacks
- CCA – Chosen Ciphertext Attacks
- TMTO – Time-Memory TradeOff
Security
- AV – Anti-Virus
- IDS/IPS – Intrusion Detection System / Intrusion Prevention System
- HIDS/HIPS – Host Intrusion Detection System / Host Intrusion Prevention System
- ASLR – Address Space Layout Randomization
- DEP – Data Execution Prevention
- SHE – Structured Exception Handler
- SGX – Intel’s Software Guard eXtension
- MPX – Intel’s Memory Protection eXtension
- BIOS/UEFI – Basic Input Output System / Unified Extensible Firmware Interface
- MBR – Master Boot Record
- VBR – Volume Boot Record
- HDE – Hard Disk Encryption
- FDE – Full Disk Encryption
- TDE – Transparent Data Encryption
- LAPS – Local Admin Password Solution
- TPM – Trusted Platform Module
- SoC – Security Operation Center
- SOC1, SOC2, SOC3 – Service Organization Control
- SIEM – Security Information and Event Management
- SCAP – Security Content Automation Protocol
- OCSP – Online Certificate Status Protocol
- IP – Internet Protocol
- VPN – Virtual Private Network
- IKE – Internet Key Exchange
- IPSEC – IP Security
- SSL – Secure Socket Layer
- TLS – Transport Layer Security
- IT – Information Technology
- IR/IH – Incident Response / Incident Handling
- 2FA/MFA – Two-Factor Authentication / Multi-Factor Authentication
- RFID – Radio Frequency IDentification
Security Certifications
- CISSP – Certified Information Systems Security Professional
- CISA – Certified Information System Auditor
- CRISC – Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control
- CISM – Certified Information System Manager
- CGEIT – Certified in the Governance of Enterprise IT
- CEH – Certified Ethical Hacker
- OSCP – Offensive Security Certified Professional
I suggest that you keep this useful list handy because you never know when you’ll need it. Who knows? It might save your life one day. Or at least it can keep your brain from going into overdrive trying to comprehend what you’re reading! IKR?
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