Acronym Series Introduction

TLA, FLA, oh my! We all know that the proliferation of acronyms in our industry can be astounding. It seems like every time I turn around, a new acronym appears among manufacturers or industry analysts. Even we engineers are guilty of trying to say more with fewer words.

Unfortunately, finding out what an acronym means is only the beginning of the process. After I decipher the acronyms someone uses, I also have to try to find out which definition they’re using for the term. The Information Technology (or IT – see, even our own descriptor is an acronym!) world is notorious for using broad terms to mean various things, especially words with a lengthy history. For example, if someone says “NAC,” meaning “Network Access Control,” that could be anything from a simple 802.1x switch port configuration to an active system that is polling devices, determining their system posture, and allowing, disallowing, or even removing their access to the network.

David J. Lesser, Nexum’s President and CEO, has always pushed Team Nexum to define our acronyms as we use them. We immediately give the expanded term for the acronym we are talking about to help remove confusion if an acronym is unknown or has more than one meaning. That’s why you’ll see the written term following an acronym when we first use it in a post. We have begun a dedicated series of blog posts in this spirit to take that process one step further.

Our Acronym Series will give you a quick reference to some common acronyms used in the industry. We plan to take on not only “current” acronyms like Secure Services Edge (SSE) but also some of the more foundational ones, like Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). Each article will give the acronym, the shortened phrase, a brief definition, and a little information to help you understand it. Note that these posts do not provide the end-all, be-all treatise on the term. We only hope to offer some baseline knowledge to help our readers navigate the acronym-filled waters of IT discussions.

Check out all of the acronyms we’ve covered below. If you have an acronym you’d like us to define, drop us a line and we’ll add it to our list! 

By the way, I certainly did not forget to define the acronyms I started this post with: Three Letter Acronym (TLA) and Four or Five Letter Acronym (FLA).