Thanks in part to IBM, no field uses acronyms like computer science. Recently I was asked to pick up product management responsibility for an evolving new line of cybersecurity products. To be relevant one needs to be current with the trendy lingo, as such here are some of the must-know acronyms. So if you’re a budding cyber security student, or hacker in training see how many of these you know off the top of your head. Note, every one of these has been checked, and the full expansion of the acronym links to the appropriate Wikipedia page.  Good luck, and enjoy.

ACL – Access Control List
AES – Advanced Encryption Standard
APT – Advanced Persistent Threat
ARP – Address Resolution Protocol
AV – AntiVirus
BGP – Border Gateway Protocol
BIND – Berkley Internet Name Domain
CAL – Client Access License
CERT – Computer Emergency Response Team
CMDB – Configuration Management Database
CRC – Cyclic Redundancy Check
CVE – Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures
DES – Data Encryption Standard
DLP – Data Loss Prevention
DNS – Domain Name System, although Service is also common
EAP – Extensible Authentication Protocol
EGP – Exterior Gateway Protocol
EMM – Enterprise Mobility Management
HIPS – Host-based Intrusion Prevention System, Wikipedia doesn’t have a unique listing for this one.
IPS – Intrusion Prevention System
IPsec – Internet Protocol Security
IDS – Intrusion Detection System
L2F – Layer-2 Forwarding protocol
L2TP – Layer-2 Tunneling Protocol
LDAP – Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
MAC – Media Access Control, as in MAC address
MAC – Mandatory Access Control
NAC – Network Access Control
NAT – Network Address Translation
NGFW – Next-Generation Firewall
NIST – National Institute of Standards and Technology
OSI – Open Systems Interconnection
OSPF – Open Shortest Path First
PAP – Password Authentication Protocol
PFS – Public-key Forward Secrecy
PGP – Pretty Good Privacy
PKI – Public Key Infrastructure
PPP – Point to Point Protocol
PPTP – Point to Point Tunneling Protocol
RARP – Reverse Address Resolution Protocol
RIP – Routing Information Protocol
RSA – Rivest-Shamir-Adleman
SCAP – Security Content Automation Protocol
SDN – Software Defined Networking
SIEM – Security Information Event Management
SNMP – Simple Network Management Protocol
SSH – Secure Shell
SSL – Secure Sockets Layer
TLS – Transport Layer Security
URI – Uniform Resource Identifier
VPN – Virtual Private Network
WAP – Wireless Application Protocol
WEP – Wired Equivalent Privacy

If it’s not on this list that doesn’t mean it’s not important, just that I’ve not yet stumbled across it, or Wikipedia doesn’t recognize it as an industry term but is likely a vendor-initiated one.