Security+ Domain 1 Acronyms

ISO

International Organization for Standardization
(The global body that sets security baselines)

AAA

Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting

PEP

Policy Enforcement Point
(The gatekeeper tool that blocks or allows traffic)

PDP

Policy Decision Point
(The brain that checks the rules and tells the PEP what to do)

PKI

Public Key Infrastructure
(The entire system of digital certificates and trust)

FDE

Full Disk Encryption
(Encrypting the entire storage drive automatically)

EFS

Encrypting File System
(Microsoft's tool for encrypting individual files/folders)

TPM

Trusted Platform Module
(The physical security chip soldered onto your computer's motherboard)

HSM

Hardware Security Module
(A dedicated network appliance used to manage and secure massive amounts of cryptographic keys)

HTTPS

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure
(Secure, encrypted web browsing)

VPN

Virtual Private Network
(An encrypted tunnel over an untrusted network)

DES 56

Data Encryption Standard
(An old, legacy, insecure symmetric encryption method)

AES

Advanced Encryption Standard
(The golden standard for strong, fast symmetric encryption)

SHA-256

Secure Hash Algorithm 256-bit
(A hashing function used to verify data integrity—not for encryption)

CA

Certificate Authority
(The trusted third party that issues digital certificates)

CRL

Certificate Revocation List
(A published list of digital certificates that have been canceled early)

OCSP

Online Certificate Status Protocol
(The fast, real-time method to check if a certificate is valid right now)

IDS

Intrusion Detection System
(A monitoring tool that watches traffic and alerts on bad activity)

honeypot

A honeypot is a decoy server that looks like an easy target for a threat actor and is used to deter a threat actor from accessing the corporate network. Few or no security controls are put in place to allow a threat actor easy access.

self-signed

A self-signed certificate is one created by an individual user or entity and not using a third-party certificate authority (CA). Self-signed certificates can be useful when authenticating within an organization’s intranet or during DevOps.

wildcard

A wildcard is the portion of an issued certificate that contains the subdomains, which are included in the certificate issued to the primary domain.

ZTNA

Zero trust network access enforces strict continous verification for every access request