9 of the Most Common Cybersecurity Acronyms and What They Mean

The internet has proved to be a fantastic tool in uniting people all over the globe and making our lives easier in myriad ways. However, it has also brought with it unique problems. More and more of our financial dealings are taking place online, including both business transactions and personal purchases, which has sparked a subsequent rise in cybercrime. 

Indeed, high-profile hacks on the sensitive information stored by companies such as Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter have seen hundreds of millions of people’s data become exposed to malicious attackers. As a result, businesses are now required to implement strict cybersecurity protocols to protect their customers and themselves from fraud and hacking, as well as exposure to individuals connected with money laundering, terrorism financing and other crimes. 

However, the terminology associated with the cybersecurity industry can be confusing to those not familiar with the subject. With that in mind, we’ve compiled a list of some of the most common cybersecurity acronyms, along with a brief description of what they mean.

APT

APT stands for Advanced Persistent Threat, which basically denotes an individual or group (usually the latter and often one backed by a malicious state) which uses sophisticated techniques to coordinate attacks over a prolonged period of time.

CAPTCHA

CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart and refers to a response test employed on website to determine whether they are being visited by a real user or a bot.

CEH

Certified Ethical Hacker is the name given to someone who uses the same techniques as bad actors to try and break down a system’s cybersecurity defenses, but with the explicit intention of finding weaknesses and strengthening them.

DDoS

DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service and occurs when a cyber criminal tries to take a system offline and make it unusable for others, often by overloading it with multiple requests from an array of sources.

GRC

This acronym stands for Governance, Risk Management and Compliance and refers to a specific set of capabilities employed by IT departments to help them manage and mitigate cyber security risks.

KYC

A concise KYC definition would be Know Your Customer, which basically involves verifying the identity of a new customer or client at the onboarding stage. This is to prevent fraud, money laundering and identity theft, among other undesirable outcomes.

MFA

Multi-factor authentication obliges a user to identify themselves from more than one source or method. For example, standard log-in credentials (username and password) may be supplemented by a special code that is sent to a user’s device.

SIEM

This acronym means Security Information and Event Management and refers to a software package that is continually assessing the threat landscape facing a company to determine the current state of its cyber defenses on an ongoing basis.

SOC

A Security Operations Center is a dedicated unit within a company which contains the personnel, technology and mandate to boost its ability to detect and withstand cyber-attacks.

Did we miss out any major acronyms from the world of cybersecurity? Let us know in the comments section.