MSP Finance Team Glossary
Our summary of useful terms for MSPs
Organised by Commercial, M&A and Operational or please use “CTRL F” to search
Commercial Acronyms, Abbreviations and Explainers
ROI – Return on Investment: A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment, calculated by dividing the profit from an investment by the cost of the investment.
TCO – Total Cost of Ownership: An estimate of all direct and indirect costs associated with an asset or acquisition over its entire life cycle.
CFO – Chief Financial Officer: A senior executive responsible for managing the financial actions of a company, including tracking cash flow, financial planning, and analysing the company’s financial strengths and weaknesses.
CAPEX – Capital Expenditure: Funds used by a company to acquire or upgrade physical assets such as property, industrial buildings, or equipment.
OPEX – Operational Expenditure: The ongoing costs for running a product, business, or system, often reflected in the profit and loss/income statement as expenses needed to keep the company operating.
EBITDA – Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization: A measure of a company’s overall financial performance and is used as an alternative to simple earnings or net income in some circumstances.
GAAP – Generally Accepted Accounting Principles: A collection of commonly followed accounting rules and standards for financial reporting.
IFRS – International Financial Reporting Standards: A set of accounting standards developed by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) that is becoming the global standard for the preparation of public company financial statements.
P&L – Profit and Loss (Statement): A financial statement that summarizes the revenues, costs, and expenses incurred during a specified period, usually a fiscal quarter or year.
CAGR – Compound Annual Growth Rate: A useful measure of growth over multiple time periods. It represents one way of describing the growth rate of an investment or a company’s revenue over time.
NPV – Net Present Value: The difference between the present value of cash inflows and the present value of cash outflows over a period of time.
IRR – Internal Rate of Return: A metric used in financial analysis to estimate the profitability of potential investments. It is a discount rate that makes the net present value of all cash flows from a particular project equal to zero.
DCF – Discounted Cash Flow: A valuation method used to estimate the value of an investment based on its expected future cash flows.
AR – Accounts Receivable: Money owed to a company by its debtors for goods or services that have been delivered or used but not yet paid for.
AP – Accounts Payable: Money owed by a company to its creditors for goods or services that have been received but not yet paid for.
EBIT – Earnings Before Interest and Taxes: An indicator of a company’s profitability, calculated as revenue minus expenses, excluding tax and interest.
Gross Margin: A company’s total sales revenue minus its cost of goods sold, divided by the total sales revenue, expressed as a percentage.
Net Margin: The ratio of net profits to revenues for a company or business segment – typically expressed as a percentage.
LTV – Lifetime Value: The prediction of the net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer.
CAC – Customer Acquisition Cost: The cost associated in convincing a customer to buy a product/service, used to determine the value of the customer to the company.
PV – Present Value: The current value of a future amount of money or stream of cash flows given a specified rate of return.
FV – Future Value: The value of an asset or cash at a specified date in the future that is equivalent in value to a specified sum today.
WACC – Weighted Average Cost of Capital: The rate that a company is expected to pay on average to all its security holders to finance its assets.
SaaS Metrics: Measures specific to Software as a Service companies, including MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue), ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue), and Churn Rate.
MRR – Monthly Recurring Revenue: The total amount of predictable and recurring revenue that a company expects on a monthly basis.
ARR – Annual Recurring Revenue: The amount of money that a company expects to receive from its customers annually for providing them with products or services.
Churn Rate: The annual percentage rate at which customers stop subscribing to a service or employees leave a job.
Quick Ratio: An indicator of a company’s short-term liquidity, measuring a company’s ability to meet its short-term obligations with its most liquid assets.
Burn Rate: The rate at which a new company uses up its venture capital to finance overhead before generating positive cash flow from operations; its negative cash flow.
COGS – Cost of Goods Sold: The direct costs attributable to the production of the goods sold by a company. This includes the cost of the materials and labour directly used to create the product.
SG&A: – Selling, General, and Administrative Expenses: The sum of all direct and indirect selling expenses and all general and administrative expenses of a company.
R&D: – Research and Development: Costs associated with the research and development of a company’s products or services. R&D expenses are a key factor in the innovation and improvement of new and existing products.
FCF – Free Cash Flow: The amount of cash a company generates after accounting for capital expenditures needed to maintain or expand its asset base. It is important because it allows a company to pursue opportunities that enhance shareholder value.
Cash Flow: The net amount of cash and cash-equivalents being transferred into and out of a business. Positive cash flow indicates that a company’s liquid assets are increasing, enabling it to settle debts, reinvest in its business, return money to shareholders, and provide a buffer against future financial challenges.
ROI – Return on Investment: A measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiencies of several different investments. ROI measures the amount of return on an investment relative to the investment’s cost.
ROE – Return on Equity: A measure of the profitability of a business in relation to the equity, it is calculated by dividing net income by shareholder equity.
ROA – Return on Assets: An indicator of how profitable a company is relative to its total assets, ROA gives an idea of how efficient management is at using its assets to generate earnings.
Liquidity Ratios: Financial metrics that measure a company’s ability to pay off its current debts without raising external capital. Common liquidity ratios include the current ratio, the quick ratio, and the operating cash flow ratio.
Solvency Ratios: Financial metrics used to gauge a company’s ability to meet its long-term obligations. They include the debt to equity ratio, the interest coverage ratio, and the equity ratio.
Efficiency Ratios: Metrics that measure how well a company uses its assets and liabilities to generate sales and maximize profits. Examples include inventory turnover, receivables turnover, and the asset turnover ratio.
Debt-to-Equity Ratio: A measure of a company’s financial leverage, calculated by dividing its total liabilities by stockholders’ equity. It indicates what proportion of equity and debt the company is using to finance its assets.
Interest Coverage Ratio: A debt and profitability ratio used to determine how easily a company can pay interest on its outstanding debt, calculated by dividing a company’s earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) by its interest expense.
Operating Margin: A margin ratio used to measure a company’s pricing strategy and operating efficiency. It indicates how much profit a company makes on a dollar of sales, after paying for variable costs of production, such as wages and raw materials, but before paying interest or tax.
Profit Margin: A financial metric used to evaluate a company’s financial health by revealing the percentage of money a company keeps as profit after accounting for all expenses. Net profit margin is one of the most important indicators of a company’s financial health.
M&A (Mergers & Acquisitions) Acronyms, Abbreviations and Explainers
LOI – Letter of Intent: A document outlining the preliminary agreements between two or more parties before a deal is finalized. It signifies the serious intent to move forward with a transaction.
DD – Due Diligence: An investigation or audit of a potential investment or product to confirm all facts, such as reviewing financial records, plus anything else deemed material.
NDA – Non-Disclosure Agreement: A legally binding contract that establishes a confidential relationship. Parties to the agreement agree that sensitive information they may obtain will not be made available to any others.
MOU – Memorandum of Understanding: An agreement between two or more parties outlined in a formal document. It is not legally binding but signals the willingness of the parties to move forward with a contract.
CDD – Commercial Due Diligence: An assessment of a company’s business plan in the context of market conditions, verifying commercial assumptions.
FDD – Financial Due Diligence: A comprehensive appraisal of a business’s financials to ensure that there are no surprises after a deal is closed. It involves the review of all financial records plus anything else deemed material to the sale.
LBO – Leveraged Buyout: A transaction where a business is acquired using a significant amount of borrowed money to meet the cost of acquisition. Often, the assets of the company being acquired are used as collateral for the loans.
MBO – Management Buyout: A transaction where a company’s management team purchases the assets and operations of the business they manage.
MBI – Management Buy-In: A type of acquisition where an external management team buys into the company and replaces the existing management team.
Earnout: A contractual provision stating that the seller of a business is to obtain additional future compensation based on the business achieving certain financial milestones.
PE – Private Equity: Investment capital that is not listed on a public exchange. Private equity is composed of funds and investors that directly invest in private companies or engage in buyouts of public companies.
VC – Venture Capital: Financing that investors provide to startup companies and small businesses that are believed to have long-term growth potential.
IPO – Initial Public Offering: The process by which a private company can go public by sale of its stocks to general public. It could be a new, young company or an older company which decides to be listed on an exchange and hence goes public.
PIPE – Private Investment in Public Equity: A type of investment in which private investors take a significant minority stake in a publicly traded company by buying shares directly from the company at a discount.
JV – Joint Venture: A business arrangement where two or more parties agree to pool their resources for the purpose of accomplishing a specific task. This task can be a new project or any other business activity.
SPAC – Special Purpose Acquisition Company: A company with no commercial operations that is formed strictly to raise capital through an IPO for the purpose of acquiring an existing company.
P2P – Private to Public: A process where a privately-held company becomes a publicly-traded company by offering its shares to the public for the first time.
P2P – Peer to Peer: A decentralized communications model in which each party has the same capabilities and either party can initiate a communication session.
Synergy: The concept that the value and performance of two companies combined will be greater than the sum of the separate individual parts.
Carve-Out: The sale of a unit of a company to another firm or the creation of a new company through the sale or distribution of new shares.
Spin-Off: A type of corporate reorganization in which a company creates a new independent company by selling or distributing new shares of its existing business.
Hostile Takeover: An attempt to acquire a company without the approval of the company’s board of directors.
White Knight: A friendly investor or company that acquires another company that is facing a hostile takeover bid, thereby saving the target from the hostile bidder.
Poison Pill: A defense strategy used by a target company to prevent or discourage a potential hostile takeover attempt.
Golden Parachute: A contract in which a corporation agrees to make payments to key executives in the event of a change in the control of the company.
Fairness Opinion: An assessment by a financial service provider as to whether the terms of a transaction are fair, typically from a financial standpoint.
Go-Shop Period: A clause in merger and acquisition agreements that allows a target company to seek out competing offers even after it has agreed to be acquired by another firm
Break-Up Fee: A penalty specified in acquisition agreements that must be paid by the party that decides to terminate the agreement before it is completed. This fee is intended to compensate the other party for the time and resources expended on the deal.
Material Adverse Change (MAC) / Material Adverse Effect (MAE): Provisions in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) contracts that allow a buyer to withdraw from a deal if significant negative changes occur in the business of the company being acquired. These clauses protect the buyer from unforeseen events that can detrimentally affect the target company’s value.
EBIT – Earnings Before Interest and Taxes: A measure of a firm’s profit that includes all expenses except interest and income tax expenses. It focuses on the ability of a company to generate earnings from operations without regard to financial structure or tax strategy (especially relevant in M&A transactions).
EBITDA – Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization: A financial indicator used to assess a company’s operating performance by adding back non-cash expenses to net income. It is emphasized in M&A contexts as it offers a clear view of the profitability from core operations.
TSR – Total Shareholder Return: A measure of the total returns to shareholders from owning stock in a company. It combines both the dividends received and the capital gains or losses from changes in the stock price.
DCF Valuation – Discounted Cash Flow Valuation: An investment analysis tool that values a company by projecting its future cash flows and then using a discount rate to find their present value. This method is widely used due to its focus on cash generation potential.
Market Cap – Market Capitalization: The aggregate valuation of a company based on its current share price and the total number of outstanding stocks. It is calculated by multiplying the current market price of a company’s shares with the total number of outstanding shares.
Enterprise Value (EV): The total value of a company, including the market cap plus any outstanding debt, minority interest, and preferred shares, minus total cash and cash equivalents. It is considered a more accurate measure of a company’s worth because it includes debt.
Multiples Valuation: A financial valuation method that compares certain financial metrics (like earnings or sales) of a company to similar metrics of other similar companies to calculate its value. Common multiples include price-to-earnings and enterprise value-to-EBITDA.
Due Care: A legal concept that refers to the effort made by an ordinarily prudent or reasonable party to avoid harm to another party. In M&A due diligence, it implies the level of judgment, care, prudence, determination, and activity that a person would reasonably be expected to do under particular circumstances.
Operational Acronyms, Abbreviations and Explainers
IT – Information Technology: The use of systems (especially computers and telecommunications) for storing, retrieving, and sending information.
SaaS – Software as a Service: A software distribution model in which a cloud provider hosts applications and makes them available to end users over the internet.
IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service: A form of cloud computing that provides virtualized computing resources over the internet.
PaaS – Platform as a Service: A category of cloud computing services that provides a platform allowing customers to develop, run, and manage applications without the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure typically associated with developing and launching an app.
SLA – Service Level Agreement: A commitment between a service provider and a client that outlines the level of service expected from the service provider.
ISP – Internet Service Provider: A company that provides individuals and other companies access to the Internet and other related services such as website building and virtual hosting.
IP – Internet Protocol: The method by which data is sent from one computer to another on the internet. Each computer (known as a host) on the internet has at least one IP address that uniquely identifies it from all other computers on the internet.
VPN – Virtual Private Network: A service that creates a direct connection from your computer to another network, typically one that’s more secure or allows you to access a specific network from a remote location.
VoIP – Voice over Internet Protocol: A category of hardware and software that enables people to use the Internet as the transmission medium for telephone calls by sending voice data in packets using IP rather than by traditional circuit transmissions.
LAN – Local Area Network: A computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, school, laboratory, university campus or office building.
WAN – Wide Area Network: A telecommunications network or computer network that extends over a large geographical distance/place. Wide area networks are often established with leased telecommunication circuits.
WLAN – Wireless LAN: A wireless computer network that links two or more devices using wireless communication to form a local area network (LAN) within a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, campus, or office building.
SSID – Service Set Identifier: The name assigned to a Wi-Fi network. When you set up a wireless home network, you give it a name to distinguish it from other networks in your neighbourhood.
DNS – Domain Name System: The phonebook of the Internet. Humans access information online through domain names, like nytimes.com or espn.com. Web browsers interact through Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. DNS translates domain names to IP addresses so browsers can load Internet resources.
DHCP – Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol: A network management protocol used on IP networks whereby a DHCP server dynamically assigns an IP address and other network configuration parameters to each device on a network so they can communicate with other IP networks.
NAT – Network Address Translation: A method of remapping one IP address space into another by modifying network address information in the IP header of packets while they are in transit across a traffic routing device.
TCP/IP – Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol: The suite of communications protocols used to connect hosts on the Internet. TCP/IP uses several protocols, the two main ones being TCP and IP.
HTTP – Hypertext Transfer Protocol: An application protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web.
HTTPS – HTTP Secure: An extension of HTTP. It is used for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet. In HTTPS, the communication protocol is encrypted using Transport Layer Security (TLS) or, formerly, its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).
SSL – Secure Sockets Layer: The standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the web server and browsers remain private and integral.
TLS – Transport Layer Security: A cryptographic protocol designed to provide communications security over a computer network. Websites can use TLS to secure all communications between their servers and web browsers.
FTP – File Transfer Protocol: A standard network protocol used for the transfer of computer files between a client and server on a computer network.
SFTP – Secure File Transfer Protocol: A network protocol that provides file access, file transfer, and file management over any reliable data stream. It was designed as an extension of the Secure Shell protocol (SSH) to provide secure file transfer capabilities.
SMTP – Simple Mail Transfer Protocol: A protocol used on the Internet for sending emails from one server to another and delivering messages to mail recipients.
IMAP – Internet Message Access Protocol: A method used by email clients to retrieve messages from a mail server over a TCP/IP connection and allows for email to be accessed and managed from multiple devices.
POP3 – Post Office Protocol 3: The third version of a widespread method of receiving email, where emails are downloaded from a server to a client and typically deleted from the server afterwards.
RDP – Remote Desktop Protocol: A proprietary protocol developed by Microsoft which provides a user with a graphical interface to connect to another computer over a network connection.
SSH – Secure Shell: A cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. It provides a secure channel over an unsecured network in a client-server architecture.
VLAN – Virtual LAN: A subgroup within a local area network that combines a group of devices from multiple networks, both physically and logically, and partitions them off from the rest.
QoS – Quality of Service: The description or measurement of the overall performance of a service, such as a telephony or computer network or a cloud computing service, particularly the performance seen by the users of the network.
BDR – Backup and Disaster Recovery: A combination of data backup and disaster recovery solutions that works cohesively to ensure a company’s critical business functions will continue to operate despite serious incidents or disasters that might otherwise have interrupted them, or will be recovered to an operational state within a reasonably short period.
DRaaS – Disaster Recovery as a Service: A cloud computing and backup service model that uses cloud resources to protect applications and data from disruption caused by disaster.
NAS – Network Attached Storage: A file-level computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients.
SAN – Storage Area Network: A network which provides access to consolidated, block level data storage. SANs are primarily used to make storage devices, such as disk arrays, tape libraries, and optical jukeboxes, accessible to servers so that the devices appear like locally attached devices to the operating system.
RAID – Redundant Array of Independent Disks: A data storage virtualization technology that combines multiple physical disk drive components into one or more logical units for the purposes of data redundancy, performance improvement, or both.
API – Application Programming Interface: A set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications. An API specifies how software components should interact and APIs are used when programming graphical user interface (GUI) components.
UI – User Interface: The space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine from the human end, whilst the machine simultaneously provides feedback that aids the operators’ decision-making process.
UX – User Experience: Refers to a person’s emotions and attitudes about using a particular product, system, or service; it includes the practical, experiential, affective, meaningful and valuable aspects of human–computer interaction and product ownership.
CRM – Customer Relationship Management: A technology for managing all your company’s relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers.
ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning: Integrated management of main business processes, often in real-time and mediated by software and technology.
BI – Business Intelligence: A technology-driven process for analysing data and presenting actionable information which helps executives, managers, and other corporate end users make informed business decisions.
IoT – Internet of Things: The network of physical objects—devices, vehicles, buildings, and other items—embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity that enable these objects to collect and exchange data.
BYOD – Bring Your Own Device: A policy that allows employees to bring their own personal mobile devices to their workplace and to use those devices to access privileged company information and applications.
MDM – Mobile Device Management: A type of security software used by an IT department to monitor, manage, and secure employees’ mobile devices that are deployed across multiple mobile service providers and across multiple mobile operating systems being used in the organization.
VDI – Virtual Desktop Infrastructure: A virtualization technology that hosts a desktop operating system on a centralized server in a data centre.
OS – Operating System: The software that supports a computer’s basic functions, such as scheduling tasks, executing applications, and controlling peripherals.
CPU – Central Processing Unit: The part of a computer system that is commonly referred to as the “brains” of a computer. The CPU is also known as the processor or microprocessor.
RAM – Random Access Memory: A type of computer memory that can be accessed randomly; that is, any byte of memory can be accessed without touching the preceding bytes. RAM is found in servers, PCs, tablets, smartphones, and other devices.
SSD – Solid State Drive: A type of mass storage device similar to a hard disk drive (HDD). It supports reading and writing data and maintains stored data in a permanent state even without power. SSD storage is much faster than its HDD equivalent.
HDD – Hard Disk Drive: A data storage device used for storing and retrieving digital information using magnetic storage. It is a non-volatile memory hardware device that permanently stores and retrieves data on a computer.
GPU – Graphics Processing Unit: A specialized processor originally designed to accelerate graphics rendering. GPUs can process many pieces of data simultaneously, making them useful for machine learning, video editing, and gaming applications.
PSU – Power Supply Unit: An internal hardware component that supplies components in a computer with power. The power supply converts the alternating current (AC) from the outlets into the direct current (DC) needed by the computer.
MFA – Multi-Factor Authentication: A security system that requires more than one method of authentication from independent categories of credentials to verify the user’s identity for a login or other transaction.
IAM – Identity and Access Management: A framework of business processes, policies, and technologies that facilitates the management of electronic or digital identities. With an IAM framework in place, information technology (IT) managers can control user access to critical information within their organizations.
SOC – Security Operations Centre: A centralized unit that deals with security issues on an organizational and technical level. A SOC within a building or facility is a central location from where staff supervises the site, using data processing technology.
SIEM – Security Information and Event Management: Provides real-time analysis of security alerts generated by applications and network hardware. It is sold as software, appliances, or managed services, and are also used to log security data and generate reports for compliance purposes.
GDPR – General Data Protection Regulation: A regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy for all individual citizens of the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA). It also addresses the transfer of personal data outside the EU and EEA areas.
ISO – International Organization for Standardization: An international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations.
PCI-DSS – Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard: A set of security standards designed to ensure that ALL companies that accept, process, store or transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment.
ITIL – Information Technology Infrastructure Library: A set of detailed practices for IT service management (ITSM) that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of business.
NOC – Network Operations Centre: A centralized location where IT technicians directly support the efforts of remote monitoring and management software. NOC teams are heavily utilized in the managed IT services space, and a tremendous driver of service delivery for many managed services providers (MSPs).
MPLS – Multi-Protocol Label Switching: A type of data-carrying technique for high-performance telecommunications networks that directs data from one network node to the next based on short path labels rather than long network addresses.
SD-WAN – Software-Defined Wide Area Network: An application of software-defined networking (SDN) technology applied to WAN connections, which are used to connect enterprise networks – including branch offices and data centres – over large geographic distances.
CVE – Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures: A list of entries—each containing an identification number, a description, and at least one public reference—for publicly known cybersecurity vulnerabilities. The mission of CVE is to identify, define, and catalog publicly disclosed cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
OWASP – Open Web Application Security Project: An online community that produces articles, methodologies, documentation, tools, and technologies in the field of web application security.
CSP – Cloud Service Provider: A company that offers some component of cloud computing – typically infrastructure as a service (IaaS), software as a service (SaaS) or platform as a service (PaaS) – to other businesses or individuals.
CDN – Content Delivery Network: A system of distributed servers (network) that deliver pages and other web content to a user based on the geographic locations of the user, the origin of the webpage, and a content delivery server.
CMS – Content Management System: A software application or set of related programs that are used to create and manage digital content. CMSs are typically used for enterprise content management (ECM) and web content management (WCM).
DDoS – Distributed Denial of Service: An attack where multiple systems overwhelm a target, like a server or website, with traffic to make it unavailable to its intended users.
IDS – Intrusion Detection System: Software or hardware designed to detect unwanted attempts at accessing, manipulating, or disabling computer systems, mainly through a network, such as the internet.
IPS – Intrusion Prevention System: A network security tool that monitors network and/or system activities for malicious actions and responds by blocking or preventing those activities.
IAM – Identity and Access Management: Systems and processes used to manage electronic identities. This allows IT managers to control user access to critical information within an organization.
PAM – Privileged Access Management: Cybersecurity strategies and technologies for exerting control over the elevated (“privileged”) access and permissions for users, accounts, processes, and systems across an IT environment.
SAML – Security Assertion Markup Language: An open standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between an identity provider and a service provider, typically used with Single Sign-On (SSO).
OIDC – OpenID Connect: A simple identity layer on top of the OAuth 2.0 protocol, allowing for client applications to verify the identity of the end-user based on the authentication performed by an authorization server.
OAuth – Open Authorization: An open standard for token-based authentication and authorization on the internet. OAuth allows an end user’s account information to be used by third-party services, such as Facebook, without exposing the user’s password.
TFA – Two-Factor Authentication: An additional layer of security that requires not only a password and username but also something that only the user has on them, i.e., a piece of information only they should know or have immediately to hand – such as a physical token.
U2F – Universal 2nd Factor: An open authentication standard that strengthens and simplifies two-factor authentication using specialized USB or NFC devices which support a cryptographic protocol.
FIDO – Fast Identity Online: An open standard for password less authentication that allows users to use biometrics, mobile devices, or FIDO security keys for secure access to online services.
PKI – Public Key Infrastructure: A system for the creation, storage, and distribution of digital certificates which are used to verify that a particular public key belongs to a certain entity.
CA – Certificate Authority: An entity that issues digital certificates. The digital certificate certifies the ownership of a public key by the named subject of the certificate.
CSR – Certificate Signing Request: A message sent from an applicant to a certificate authority in order to apply for a digital identity certificate.
SSL/TLS – Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security: Cryptographic protocols designed to provide secure communication over a computer network by encrypting the segments of network connections at the Transport Layer end-to-end.
E2E – End-to-End Encryption: A method of communication where only the communicating users can read the messages. In principle, it prevents potential eavesdroppers – including telecom providers, Internet providers, and even the provider of the communication service – from being able to access the cryptographic keys needed to decrypt the conversation.
AES – Advanced Encryption Standard: A symmetric encryption algorithm widely adopted around the world. It is found in many types of software to encrypt sensitive data.
RSA – Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (encryption): A public-key cryptosystem that is widely used for secure data transmission. It is also one of the algorithms used in SSL/TLS for securing web traffic.
VPN – Virtual Private Network: A service that encrypts your internet connection to keep your online activities private and secure by creating a private network from a public internet connection.
VPS – Virtual Private Server: A virtual machine sold as a service by an Internet hosting service that runs its own copy of an operating system, allowing customers superuser-level access.
RTO – Recovery Time Objective: The maximum amount of time, following a disaster, that an organization’s IT services can be offline without causing irreparable harm to the business.
RPO – Recovery Point Objective: The maximum amount of recent data loss that is acceptable during a disaster recovery process.
BCP – Business Continuity Planning: The process by which an organization seeks to ensure that it can continue to function during and after a significant disruptive event.
DR – Disaster Recovery: Strategies and processes that help recover and protect a business IT infrastructure in the event of a disaster.
ITSM – IT Service Management: The activities that are performed by an organization to design, build, deliver, operate and control information technology (IT) services offered to customers.
ITOM – IT Operations Management: Encompasses the day-to-day tasks related to managing the infrastructure components and services of an IT department, including network infrastructure, servers, and device management.
KPI – Key Performance Indicator: A type of performance measurement that evaluates the success of an organization or of a particular activity in which it engages.
SLM – Service Level Management: The process of managing the quality of services provided in IT service management, ensuring that agreed upon service levels are met and monitoring and reporting on service levels.
MTTR – Mean Time To Repair: The average time required to repair a broken system or component and return it to operational status.
MTBF – Mean Time Between Failures: A measure of how reliable a hardware product or component is; it refers to the average amount of time that passes between one hardware component failure and the next.
MSP – Managed Service Provider: A third-party company that remotely manages a customer’s IT infrastructure and/or end-user systems, which may be subscription-based and delivered over the internet.
MSSP – Managed Security Service Provider: A company that provides outsourced monitoring and management of security devices and systems, such as firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and security event management.
SOC-as-a-Service – Security Operations Centre as a Service: A subscription or software-based service that manages and monitors logs, devices, clouds, network, and assets for internal IT security departments.
UEM – Unified Endpoint Management: A class of software tools that provide a single management interface for mobile, PC, and other devices.
EPP – Endpoint Protection Platform: A solution deployed on endpoint devices to prevent file-based malware, to detect and block malicious activity, and to provide the investigation and remediation capabilities needed to respond to dynamic security incidents and alerts.
EDR – Endpoint Detection and Response: Security systems designed to detect and investigate suspicious activities on hosts and endpoints. Essentially, EDR tools are advanced threat detection solutions.
XDR – Extended Detection and Response: Refers to a unified security and incident response solution that automatically collects and correlates data from multiple proprietary security components.
NGFW – Next-Generation Firewall: A part of the third generation of firewall technology, combining a traditional firewall with other network device filtering functionalities, including encrypted traffic inspection, intrusion prevention, and bringing intelligence from outside the firewall.
UTM – Unified Threat Management: A security solution that provides multiple security functions at a single point on the network. A UTM device typically combines, the functions of a firewall with antivirus, gateway anti-spam, intrusion detection and prevention capabilities, and network management tools.
WAF – Web Application Firewall: A specific form of application firewall that filters, monitors, and blocks HTTP traffic to and from a web service. It is a protection tool between a web application and the internet.
DLP – Data Loss Prevention: A strategy for making sure that end users do not send sensitive or critical information outside the corporate network. The term is also used to describe software products that help a network administrator control what data end users can transfer.
GDPR – General Data Protection Regulation: The core of Europe’s digital privacy legislation. It focuses on ensuring that users know, understand, and consent to the data collected about them.
HIPAA – Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act: U.S. legislation that provides data privacy and security provisions for safeguarding medical information.
SOX – Sarbanes-Oxley Act: A U.S. federal law that aims to protect investors by making corporate disclosures more reliable and accurate.
VAPT – Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing: Services designed to identify security holes within a company’s IT infrastructure, specifically related to cyber threats.
CTI – Cyber Threat Intelligence: Information that an organization uses to understand the threats that have, will, or are currently targeting the organization. This info is used to prepare, prevent, and identify cyber threats looking to take advantage of valuable resources.
APT – Advanced Persistent Threat: A broad term used to describe an attack campaign in which an intruder, or team of intruders, establishes an illicit, long-term presence on a network in order to mine highly sensitive data.
SOC 2 – Service Organization Control 2: A type of audit report that focuses on a business’s non-financial reporting controls as they relate to security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy of a system.
ISO/IEC 27001: An international standard on how to manage information security. It details requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining, and continually improving an information security management system (ISMS)
AI – Artificial Intelligence: The simulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to think like humans and mimic their actions. This term can also be applied to any machine that exhibits traits associated with a human mind, such as learning and problem-solving.
ML – Machine Learning: A branch of artificial intelligence based on the idea that systems can learn from data, identify patterns, and make decisions with minimal human intervention.
NLP – Natural Language Processing: A branch of artificial intelligence that helps computers understand, interpret, and manipulate human language. NLP draws from many disciplines, including computer science and computational linguistics, in its pursuit to fill the gap between human communication and computer understanding.
RPA – Robotic Process Automation: Technology that allows anyone to configure computer software, or a “robot,” to emulate and integrate the actions of a human interacting within digital systems to execute a business process.
IoC – Indicator of Compromise: An artifact observed on a network or in an operating system that with high confidence indicates a computer intrusion.
TTP – Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures: The behaviour or modus operandi of cyber attackers, used as a set of patterns that can aid in understanding the threats and potentially predict future attacks.
VM – Virtual Machine: An emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide the functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hardware, software, or a combination.
LXC – Linux Containers: A lightweight virtualization method to run multiple virtual units simultaneously on a single control host. Containers are isolated from one another and bundle their own software, libraries, and configuration files; they can communicate with each other through well-defined channels.
Docker: An open platform for developing, shipping, and running applications. Docker enables you to separate your applications from your infrastructure so you can deliver software quickly.
Kubernetes (K8s): An open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It groups containers that make up an application into logical units for easy management and discovery.
CI/CD – Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment: CI/CD are methods to frequently deliver apps to customers by introducing automation into the stages of app development. The main concepts attributed to CI/CD are continuous integration, continuous deployment, and continuous delivery.
DevOps: A set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops). It aims to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with high software quality.
DevSecOps: A philosophy that integrates security practices within the DevOps process. DevSecOps involves creating a ‘Security as Code’ culture with ongoing, flexible collaboration between release engineers and security teams.
IaC – Infrastructure as Code: The process of managing and provisioning computer data centers through machine-readable definition files, rather than physical hardware configuration or interactive configuration tools.
SCM – Software Configuration Management: The task of tracking and controlling changes in the software, part of the larger cross-disciplinary field of configuration management.
VCS – Version Control System: A category of software tools that help a software team manage changes to source code over time. Version control software keeps track of every modification to the code in a special kind of database.
Git: A free and open-source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.
SVN – Apache Subversion: A software versioning and revision control system distributed as open-source under the Apache License. Developers use Subversion to maintain current and historical versions of files such as source code, web pages, and documentation.
JSON – JavaScript Object Notation: A lightweight data-interchange format that is easy for humans to read and write and easy for machines to parse and generate.
XML – extensible Markup Language: A markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable.
YAML – YAML Ain’t Markup Language: A human-readable data serialization standard that can be used in conjunction with all programming languages and is often used to write configuration files.
API – Application Programming Interface (reiteration for emphasis): A computing interface that defines interactions between multiple software intermediaries. It defines the kinds of calls or requests that can be made, how to make them, the data formats that should be used, the conventions to follow, etc.
REST – Representational State Transfer: An architectural style for providing standards between computer systems on the web, making it easier for systems to communicate with each other.
SOAP – Simple Object Access Protocol: A messaging protocol specification for exchanging structured information in the implementation of web services in computer networks.
GraphQL: An open-source data query and manipulation language for APIs, and a runtime for fulfilling queries
SDK – Software Development Kit: A collection of software tools and libraries designed to help developers create applications for specific platforms or frameworks.
IDE – Integrated Development Environment: A software suite that consolidates the basic tools developers need to write and test software. IDEs typically include a code editor, a compiler or interpreter, and a debugger that the developer accesses through a single graphical user interface (GUI).
SRE – Site Reliability Engineering: A discipline that incorporates aspects of software engineering and applies them to infrastructure and operations problems. The main goals are to create scalable and highly reliable software systems.
HPC – High-Performance Computing: The use of supercomputers and parallel processing techniques for solving complex computational problems. HPC technology focuses on developing parallel processing algorithms and systems by incorporating both administration and parallel computational techniques.
FaaS – Function as a Service: A cloud computing service that allows you to execute code in response to events without the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure typically associated with developing and launching an application.
BaaS – Backend as a Service: A model for providing web app and mobile app developers with a way to link their applications to backend cloud storage and APIs exposed by back-end applications while also providing features such as user management, push notifications, and integration with social networking services.
DaaS – Desktop as a Service: A cloud computing offering that delivers virtual desktops provided and managed by a third party. Also known as virtual desktops, DaaS delivers the desktop experience as a service over the internet.
ZTNA – Zero Trust Network Access: A cybersecurity paradigm focused on the belief that organizations should not automatically trust anything inside or outside their perimeters and instead must verify anything and everything trying to connect to its systems before granting access.
SDP – Software Defined Perimeter: A security framework that enforces network security on an individual device basis, regardless of whether a user is connecting from inside or outside the network.
CASB – Cloud Access Security Broker: Security policy enforcement points placed between cloud service consumers and cloud service providers to combine and interject enterprise security policies as cloud-based resources are accessed.
SWG – Secure Web Gateway: Solutions that filter unwanted software/malware from user-initiated web/internet traffic and enforce corporate and regulatory policy compliance.
CORS – Cross-Origin Resource Sharing: A mechanism that allows many resources (e.g., fonts, JavaScript, etc.) on a web page to be requested from another domain outside the domain from which the first resource was served.
SSE – Security Service Edge: A security framework that emphasizes securing access to the web, cloud services, and private applications. It’s a key component of a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architecture.
MLOps – Machine Learning Operations: A set of practices that aims to deploy and maintain machine learning models in production reliably and efficiently.
Quantum Computing: A type of computing that uses quantum mechanics to perform computation. Quantum computers use quantum bits or qubits which can represent and solve problems that are intractable for classical computers.
Blockchain: A system of recording information in a way that makes it difficult or impossible to change, hack, or cheat the system. A blockchain is essentially a digital ledger of transactions that is duplicated and distributed across the entire network of computer systems on the blockchain.
NFT – Non-Fungible Token: A non-interchangeable unit of data stored on a blockchain, a form of digital ledger, that can be sold and traded. NFTs can be associated with reproducible digital files such as photos, videos, and audio.
DeFi – Decentralized Finance: An emerging financial technology based on secure distributed ledgers similar to those used by cryptocurrencies. It removes the control banks and institutions have on money, financial products, and financial services.
Cryptocurrency: A digital or virtual currency that uses cryptography for security. A defining feature of cryptocurrencies is that they are generally not issued by any central authority, rendering them theoretically immune to government interference or manipulation.
Bitcoin (BTC): The first decentralized digital currency, as the system works without a central bank or single administrator. It is a peer-to-peer system, and transactions take place between users directly, without an intermediary.
Ethereum (ETH): A decentralized, open source blockchain featuring smart contract functionality. Ether (ETH) is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Amongst cryptocurrencies, Ether is second only to Bitcoin in market capitalization.
LTE – Long-Term Evolution: A standard for wireless broadband communication for mobile devices and data terminals, based on the GSM/EDGE and UMTS/HSPA technologies. It increases the capacity and speed using a different radio interface together with core network improvements.
5G: The fifth-generation technology standard for broadband cellular networks, which cellular phone companies began deploying worldwide in 2019