Technology Abbreviations & Acronyms Commonly Used

Technology has become an inseparable part of our everyday lives, and so are technology abbreviations. Whether you’re a seasoned techie or someone interested in technology, it is common to feel lost in the world of tech jargon. Knowing these terms can help tech professionals communicate better. Knowing these abbreviations will also help non-techies understand complex tech news articles. 

To assist anyone interested, we have curated a list of commonly used tech acronyms and classified them into subcategories for quick finding.

Cloud Computing

Here are common abbreviations related to cloud computing.

Acronym	Full Form
ACD	Automated Call Distribution
ACID	Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability
CASB	Cloud Access Security Broker
CCM	Cloud Cost Management
CDN	Content Delivery Network
CMD	Configuration Management Database
CSP	Cloud Service Provider
DDoS	Distributed Denial of Service
DPA	Data Processing Agreement
EBS	Elastic Block Store
ECM	Enterprise Content Management
ESB	Enterprise Service Bus
FaaS	Function as a Service
FIM	File Integrity Monitoring
HPC	High-Performance Computing
IaaS	Infrastructure as a Service
IAS	Identity and Access Management
IDS	Intrusion Detection System
IPS	Intrusion Prevention System
MDM	Mobile Device Management
NaaS	Network as a Service
NAS	Network Attached Storage
OCI	Open Container Initiative
PaaS	Platform as a Service
SaaS	Software as a Service
SFTP	Secure File Transfer Protocol
SIEM	Security Information and Event Management
SOC	Security Operations Center
STaaS	Storage as a Service
VPC	Virtual Private Cloud
WAF	Web Application Firewall
XDR	Extended Detection and Response

AI and ML

The following acronyms are used in the fields of AI and ML.

Acronym	Full Form
AI	Artificial Intelligence
ANN	Artificial Neural Network
ASR	Automatic Speech Recognition
AUC	Area Under Curve
BERT	Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers
BEU	Bilingual Evaluation Understudy
CBOW	Continuous Bag of Words
CNN	Convolutional Neural Network
CTC	Connectionist Temporal Classification
CV	Computer Vision
DL	Deep Learning
DNN	Deep Neural Network
DSBS	Decision Support Business System
EDA	Exploratory Data Analysis
GAN	Generative Adversarial Network
GPT	Generative Pre-trained Transformer
HMM	Hidden Markov Model
IMS	Intelligent Management System
IoU	Intersection over Union
LNN	Logic Neural Network
LSTM	Long Short-Term Memory
M2M	Machine to Machine
MAE	Mean Absolute Error
MI	Mutual Information
ML	Machine Learning
MLOps	Machine Learning Operations
MSE	Mean Squared Error
NA	Natural Intelligence
NNN	Nonlinear Neural Network
NLP	Natural Language Processing
NLU	Natural Language Understanding
PCA	Principal Component Analysis
Q-Learning	Quality Learning
RL	Reinforcement Learning
RMSE	Root Mean Squared Error
RNN	Recurrent Neural Network
ROC	Receiver Operating Characteristic
RPA	Robotic Process Automation
SGD	Stochastic Gradient Descent
SR	Speech Recognition
SVM	Support Vector Machine
TF-IDF	Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency
TTS	Text to Speech

Data Management

Here are some data management related abbreviations.

Acronym	Full Form
4D QL	Four-Dimensional Query Language
ACID	Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability
ADF	Application Development Framework
ADSI	Active Directory Service Interfaces
API	Application Programming Interface
BCNF	Boyce-Codd Normal Form
BI	Business Intelligence
BLO	Binary Large Object
CDM	Conceptual Data Model
CLO	Character Large Object
CRUD	Create, Read, Update, Delete
CUD	Create, Update, Delete
DAS	Direct Attached Storage
DMS	Database Management System
DCI	Data, Context, Interaction
DCM	Data Content Management
DDL	Data Definition Language
DML	Data Manipulation Language
DMS	Data Management System
DQL	Data Query Language
DRDA	Distributed Relational Database Architecture
DSS	Decision Support System
DW	Data Warehouse
EER	Enhanced Entity-Relationship
ELT	Extract, Load, Transform
ERD	Entity-Relationship Diagram
ETL	Extract, Transform, Load
FK	Foreign Key
GIS	Geographic Information System
JDC	Java Database Connectivity
JSON	JavaScript Object Notation
LOD	Level of Detail
MDM	Master Data Management
MIS	Management Information System
MQT	Materialized Query Table
NF	Normal Form
NoSQL	Not Only SQL
ODBC	Open Database Connectivity
OAP	Online Analytical Processing
OLM	Online Marketing
OLTP	Online Transaction Processing
PK	Primary Key
PL/SQL	Procedural Language/Structured Query Language
RDMS	Relational Database Management System
RDF	Resource Description Framework
RDSMS	Relational Data Stream Management System
RMD	Relational Model Database
RPO	Recovery Point Objective
RTDBMS	Real-Time Database Management System
RTO	Recovery Time Objective
SCD	Slowly Changing Dimension
SP	Stored Procedure
SQL	Structured Query Language
T-SQL	Transact-SQL
TCL	Transaction Control Language
UDF	User Defined Function
UUID	Universally Unique Identifier
XSLT	Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations

Software Development

The following abbreviations are used in the field of software development.

Acronym	Full Form
AJAX	Asynchronous JavaScript and XML
API	Application Programming Interface
ASCII	American Standard Code for Information Interchange
BDD	Behavior-Driven Development
CI/CD	Continuous Delivery / Continuous Deployment
CI	Continuous Integration
CLI	Command Line Interface
CSRF	Cross-Site Request Forgery
CSS	Cascading Style Sheets
CSS3	Cascading Style Sheets, version 3
DOM	Document Object Model
DSL	Domain-Specific Language
EOF	End of File
EOL	End of Line
FIFO	First In, First Out
GIT	Global Information Tracker
HTML	HyperText Markup Language
I/O	Input/Output
IDE	Integrated Development Environment
JAVA EE	Java Platform, Enterprise Edition
JCE	Java Cryptography Extension
JDK	Java Development Kit
JS	JavaScript
JSON	JavaScript Object Notation
JWT	JSON Web Token
MVC	Model-View-Controller
MVP	Model-View-Presenter
OAUTH	Open Authorization
OOP	Object-Oriented Programming
PHP	Hypertext Preprocessor
QA	Quality Assurance
RAD	Rapid Application Development
RST	Representational State Transfer
SAML	Security Assertion Markup Language
SDK	Software Development Kit
SOAP	Simple Object Access Protocol
SPA	Single-Page Application
SSH	Secure Shell
SSL	Secure Sockets Layer
TDD	Test-Driven Development
TLS	Transport Layer Security
UI	User Interface
UX	User Experience
VBS	Visual Basic Script
VCS	Version Control System
WYSIWYG	What You See Is What You Get
XHTML	Extensible HyperText Markup Language
XML	Extensible Markup Language
XML RPC	XML Remote Procedure Call
XSD	XML Schema Definition
XSS	Cross-Site Scripting
YAML	YAML Ain’t Markup Language

Cybersecurity

The list of cybersecurity acronyms is as follows.

Acronym	Full Form
ACL	Access Control List
AES	Advanced Encryption Standard
APT	Advanced Persistent Threat
CBSP	Cloud-Based Security Posture
CISO	Chief Information Security Officer
CORS	Cross-Origin Resource Sharing
CSP	Content Security Policy
CSRF	Cross-Site Request Forgery
CTF	Capture the Flag
CVSS	Common Vulnerability Scoring System
CWE	Common Weakness Enumeration
DDoS	Distributed Denial of Service
DES	Data Encryption Standard
DKIM	DomainKeys Identified Mail
DLP	Data Loss Prevention
DMARC	Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance
DNSSE	Domain Name System Security Extensions
DoS	Denial of Service
DSA	Digital Signature Algorithm
DT	Data Transmission
FISMA	Federal Information Security Management Act
FUD	File Under Dust
GRC	Governance, Risk, and Compliance
HIDS	Host-based Intrusion Detection System
IAM	Identity and Access Management
IDS	Intrusion Detection System
IPS	Intrusion Prevention System
IPSec	IP Security
IR	Incident Response
ISO	International Organization for Standardization
LFI	Local File Inclusion
MFA	Multi-Factor Authentication
MITM	Man-in-the-Middle
NIDS	Network-based Intrusion Detection System
NIST	National Institute of Standards and Technology
OSCI	Open Source Compliance Initiative
OWASP	Open Web Application Security Project
PCI DSS	Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard
PII	Personally Identifiable Information
PKI	Public Key Infrastructure
PT	Penetration Testing
RAT	Remote Access Trojan
RDP	Remote Desktop Protocol
RFI	Remote File Inclusion
SAML	Security Assertion Markup Language
SAST	Static Application Security Testing
SCD	Security Configuration and Deployment
SE	Security Engineer
SIEM	Security Information and Event Management
SOC	Security Operations Center
SPF	Sender Policy Framework
SQLi	SQL Injection
SSE	Server-Side Encryption
STS	Security Token Service
TLS	Transport Layer Security
VPN	Virtual Private Network
WAF	Web Application Firewall
WAP	Wireless Application Protocol
XSS	Cross-Site Scripting

IT Infrastructure

These are the abbreviations used in IT infrastructure.

Acronym	Full Form
ADFC	Active Directory Federation Services
BGP	Border Gateway Protocol
BIOS	Basic Input/Output System
BYOD	Bring Your Own Device
CI/CD	Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment
CLI	Command Line Interface
DC	Data Center/Direct Current
DHCP	Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
DNS	Domain Name System
DRS	Distributed Resource Scheduler
ESX	Elastic Sky X (formerly, now part of VMware’s hypervisor technology)
FOSS	Free and Open-Source Software
FTP	File Transfer Protocol
GUI	Graphical User Interface
HA	High Availability
HAC	High Availability Cluster
HTTP	Hypertext Transfer Protocol
HTTPS	Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure
IDS	Intrusion Detection System
IOPS	Input/Output Operations Per Second
IPS	Intrusion Prevention System
iSCSI	Internet Small Computer Systems Interface
KVM	Kernel-based Virtual Machine
LDAP	Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
MTSC	Microsoft Terminal Services Client
NAS	Network Attached Storage
NFS	Network File System
OLA	Operational Level Agreement
OS	Operating System
OSS	Open Source Software
P2V	Physical to Virtual (conversion)
PSU	Power Supply Unit
QE	Quick Emulator (open-source emulator and virtualizer)
RAID	Redundant Array of Independent Disks
RAM	Random Access Memory
ROM	Read-Only Memory
SAN	Storage Area Network
SDN	Software-Defined Networking
SFTP	Secure File Transfer Protocol
SMTP	Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
SNMP	Simple Network Management Protocol
SSD	Solid State Drive
SS	Secure Shell
TCP/IP	Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol
TTP	Teletypewriter
UPS	Uninterruptible Power Supply
VCS	Version Control System/ Veritas Cluster Server
VDI	Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
VG	Volume Group
VM	Virtual Machine
VSM	Virtual Supervisor Module (Cisco)
VTL	Virtual Tape Library
VXLAN	Virtual Extensible LAN
WINS	Windows Internet Name Service
WMI	Windows Management Instrumentation

Networking/Internet

The following list contains networking abbreviations.

Acronym	Full Form
BGP	Border Gateway Protocol
CIDR	Classless Inter-Domain Routing
CNAME	Canonical Name
D2D	Device to Device
DHCP	Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
DOM	Document Object Model
HAR	HTTP Archive
ICMP	Internet Control Message Protocol
IMAP	Internet Message Access Protocol
IoT	Internet of Things
IP	Internet Protocol
LAN	Local Area Network
MAC	Media Access Control
MIME	Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
MPLS	Multiprotocol Label Switching
MX	Mail Exchange
NA	Negative Acknowledgment
NAT	Network Address Translation
NIC	Network Interface Card
NS	Name Server
POP	Post Office Protocol
PPTP	Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol
QoS	Quality of Service
QUIC	Quick UDP Internet Connections
RDP	Remote Desktop Protocol
RSS	Really Simple Syndication
SOA	Start of Authority
TCP	Transmission Control Protocol
TLD	Top-Level Domain
TTL	Time to Live
UDP	User Datagram Protocol
URI	Uniform Resource Identifier
URL	Uniform Resource Locator
VIP	Virtual IP Address
VLAN	Virtual LAN
WAN	Wide Area Network
WLAN	Wireless Local Area Network
WPAN	Wireless Personal Area Network
WWW	World Wide Web

AWS

Here is the list of popular AWS-related abbreviations.

Acronym	Full Form
AWS	Amazon Web Services
AES	Amazon Elasticsearch Service (now Amazon OpenSearch Service)
AMI	Amazon Machine Image
ACM	AWS Certificate Manager
ASG	Auto Scaling Group
ECC	Elastic Compute Cloud
ECS	Elastic Container Service
ECR	Elastic Container Registry
EFS	Elastic File System
EI	Elastic Inference
ENA	Elastic Network Adapter
EKS	Elastic Kubernetes Service
EBS	Elastic Block Store
EMR	Elastic MapReduce
ELB	Elastic Load Balancing
EFA	Elastic Fabric Adapter
EIP	Elastic IP Address
ENI	Elastic Network Interface
ECU	Elastic Compute Unit
KMS	Key Management Service
S3	Simple Storage Service
RDS	Relational Database Service
SNS	Simple Notification Service
SQS	Simple Queue Service
SWS	Simple Workflow Service

Azure

Azure related abbreviations are listed below.

Acronym	Full Form
AAD	Azure Active Directory
AAD B2C	Azure Active Directory Business to Consumer
ADF	Azure Data Factory
AKS	Azure Kubernetes Service
ARM	Azure Resource Manager
ARM Template	Azure Resource Manager Template
ASR	Azure Site Recovery
Azure Arc	Azure management for any infrastructure
Blob	Binary Large Object
COSMOS DB	Azure Cosmos Database
NSG	Network Security Group
RG	Resource Group
VNet	Virtual Network

GCP

These acronyms are related to GCP (Google Cloud Platform).

Acronym	Full Form
GCP	Google Cloud Platform
GCE	Google Compute Engine
GKE	Google Kubernetes Engine
GCS	Google Cloud Storage

Conclusion

After going through this list of technology abbreviations, readers will better understand the technology world.