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 CompTIA Security+ Acronyms

This list of acronyms comes directly from the CompTIA Security+ Certification
Exam Objectives: SY0-401 v.6. It is unaltered from that source. You can find the lat-
est objectives on the CompTIA web site.

3DES – Triple Digital Encryption Standard

AAA – Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting
ACL – Access Control List
AES – Advanced Encryption Standard
AES256 – Advanced Encryption Standards 256bit
AH – Authentication Header
ALE – Annualized Loss Expectancy
AP – Access Point
API – Application Programming Interface
ASP – Application Service Provider
ARO – Annualized Rate of Occurrence
ARP – Address Resolution Protocol
AUP – Acceptable Use Policy
BAC – Business Availability Center
BCP – Business Continuity Planning
BIA – Business Impact Analysis
BIOS – Basic Input / Output System
BPA – Business Partners Agreement
BYOD – Bring Your Own Device
CA – Certificate Authority
CAC – Common Access Card

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CAN – Controller Area Network

CAPTCHA – Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Hu-
mans Apart
CAR – Corrective Action Report
CCMP – Counter-Mode/CBC-Mac Protocol
CCTV – Closed-circuit television
CERT – Computer Emergency Response Team
CHAP – Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol
CIO – Chief Information Officer
CIRT – Computer Incident Response Team
COOP – Continuity of Operation Planning
CP – Contingency Planning
CRC – Cyclical Redundancy Check
CRL – Certification Revocation List
CSR – Control Status Register
CSU – Channel Service Unit
CTO – Chief Technology Officer
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 – Data-Handling Electronics
DHE – Diffie-Hellman Ephemeral
DLL – Dynamic Link Library
DLP – Data Loss Prevention
DMZ – Demilitarized Zone
DNAT – Destination Network Address Transaction
DNS – Domain Name Service (Server)
DOS – Denial of Service

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 CompTIA Security+ Acronyms 4

DRP – Disaster Recovery Plan

DSA – Digital Signature Algorithm
DSL – Digital Subscriber line
DSU – Data Service Unit
EAP – Extensible Authentication Protocol
ECC – Elliptic Curve Cryptography
ECDHE – Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman Ephemeral
EFS – Encrypted File System
EMI – Electromagnetic Interference
ESN – Electronic Serial Number
ESP – Encapsulated Security Payload
FACL – File System Access Control List
FDE – Full Disk Encryption
FTP – File Transfer Protocol
FTPS – Secured File Transfer Protocol
GPG – Gnu Privacy Guard
GPO – Group Policy Object
GPS – Global Positioning System
GPU – Graphic Processing Unit
GRE – Generic Routing Encapsulation
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 over SSL
HVAC – Heating, Ventilation Air Conditioning

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IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service

ICMP – Internet Control Message Protocol
ID – Identification
IDS – Intrusion Detection System
IKE – Internet Key Exchange
IM – Instant messaging
IMAP4 – Internet Message Access Protocol v4
IP – Internet Protocol
IPSEC – Internet Protocol Security
IR – Incident Response
IRC – Internet Relay Chat
IRP – Incident Response Procedure
ISA – Interconnection Security Agreement
ISP – Internet Service Provider
ISSO – Information Systems Security Officer
ITCP – IT Contingency Plan
IV – Initialization Vector
JBOD – Just a Bunch of Disks
KDC – Key Distribution Center
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 / Media Access Control
MAC – Message Authentication Code
MAN – Metropolitan Area Network
MBR – Master Boot Record
MD5 – Message Digest 5
MOU – Memorandum of Understanding

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MPLS – Multi-Protocol Layer Switch

MSCHAP – Microsoft Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol
MTBF – Mean Time Between Failures
MTTR – Mean Time to Recover
MTTF – Mean Time to Failure
MTU – Maximum Transmission Unit
NAC – Network Access Control
NAT – Network Address Translation
NDA – Non-Disclosure Agreement
NFC – Near Field Communication
NIDS – Network Based Intrusion Detection System
NIPS – Network Based Intrusion Prevention System
NIST – National Institute of Standards & Technology
NOS – Network Operating System
NTFS – New Technology File System
NTLM – New Technology LANMAN
NTP – Network Time Protocol
OCSP – Online Certificate Status Protocol
OLA – Open License Agreement
OS – Operating System
OVAL – Open Vulnerability Assessment Language
P2P – Peer to Peer
PAC – Proxy Auto Configuration
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
PEAP – Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol

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PED – Personal Electronic Device

PGP – Pretty Good Privacy
PII – Personally Identifiable Information
PIV – Personal Identity Verification
PKI – Public Key Infrastructure
POTS – Plain Old Telephone Service
PPP – Point to point Protocol
PPTP – Point to Point Tunneling Protocol
PSK – Pre-Shared Key
PTZ – Pan-Tilt-Zoom
RA – Recovery Agent
RAD – Rapid application development
RADIUS – Remote Authentication Dial-in User Server
RAID – Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks
RAS – Remote Access Server
RBAC – Role Based Access Control
RBAC – Rule Based Access Control
RC4 – RSA Variable Key Size Encryption Algorithm
RIPEMD – RACE Integrity Primitives Evaluation Message Digest
ROI – Return of Investment
RPO – Recovery Point Objective
RSA – Rivest, Shamir, & Adleman
RTO – Recovery Time Objective
RTP – Real-Time Transport Protocol
S/MIME – Secure / Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
SAML – Security Assertions Markup Language
SaaS – Software as a Service
SAN – Storage Area Network
SCADA – System Control and Data Acquisition
SCAP – Security Content Automation Protocol

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 CompTIA Security+ Acronyms 8

SCEP – Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol

SCSI – Small Computer System Interface
SDLC – Software Development Life Cycle
SDLM – Software Development Life Cycle Methodology
SEH – Structured Exception Handler
SHA – Secure Hashing Algorithm
SFTP – Secured File Transfer Protocol
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
SNMP – Simple Network Management Protocol
SOAP – Simple Object Access Protocol
SONET – Synchronous Optical Network Technologies
SPIM – Spam over Internet Messaging
SQL – Structured Query Language
SSD – Solid State Drive
SSH – Secure Shell
SSL – Secure Sockets Layer
SSO – Single Sign On
STP – Shielded Twisted Pair
TACACS+ – Terminal Access Controller Access Control System
TCP/IP – Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol
TGT – Ticket Granting Ticket
TKIP – Temporal Key Integrity Protocol
TLS – Transport Layer Security
TOTP – Time-Based One-Time Password

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TPM – Trusted Platform Module

TSIG – Transaction Signature
UAT – User Acceptance Testing
UEFI – Unified Extensible Firmware Interface
UDP – User Datagram Protocol
UPS – Uninterruptable Power Supply
URI – Uniform Resource Identifier
URL – Universal Resource Locator
USB – Universal Serial Bus
UTM – Unified Threat Management
UTP – Unshielded Twisted Pair
VDI – Virtualization Desktop Infrastructure
VLAN – Virtual Local Area Network
VoIP – Voice over IP
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
WPA – Wireless Protected Access
WPA2 – WiFi Protected Access 2
WPS – WiFi Protected Setup
WTLS – Wireless TLS
XML – Extensible Markup Language
XSRF – Cross-Site Request Forgery
XSS – Cross-Site Scripting

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