If you’re an IT professional or someone willing to learn more about networking security, you need to familiarise yourself with certain important networking terms and acronyms.
With the technological advancements, so many new security solutions and networking services are introduced to meet modern enterprises’ needs and cope with the increasing cybersecurity threats.
For instance, terms like Bring Your Own Devices (BYOD) and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) became popular among companies after the 2020 global pandemic.
Don’t worry; if you still aren’t aware of these terms—here’s a peek into some of the most critical networking terms you should know to stay ahead of the competition and keep hackers and attackers away from your network. So, let’s get right into it!
10 Important Networking Acronyms Everyone Should Know
Here is the list of network acronyms that everyone should know:
- ZTN
The Zero Trust Network (ZTN) operates with the Zero Trust Security model, which requires every device and user to pass the strict authentication and authorisation process to access the network and its resources.
- SASE
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) offers companies ways to securely connect their users and employees to the network applications and services from remote locations—converging the network and security functionalities into a single cloud-based solution.
Hence, it enables companies to shorten product development and delivery and promptly respond to the changes in the business environment.
- BYOD
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) in the computer network acronyms is a practice that allows employees to bring their personal devices—like laptops, desktops, and tablets) to the workplace and use them for the company work.
Although BYOD can pose certain security risks because of the lack of security in the devices and the number of connected devices to the network—increasing surface attack—you can eliminate it by implementing Zero Trust solutions for secure remote access.
- SD-WAN
The Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) is a virtual WAN architecture that offers optimised network traffic routing over different media like LTE, 5G, and broadband.
It chooses and provides the best available path to route the traffic—offering much better reliability and performance than broadband.
- XDR
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) is a security service that provides visibility through the entire organisation’s network and IT environment—detecting and responding to threats across the network attack surface.
- CDN
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a network of servers distributed across different geographical locations that deliver cached copies of website pages and content.
They’re network solutions that reduce the workload on the servers, improving the website’s performance and page speed.
- SDN
Software-Defined Networks (SDN) are defined and managed in software that decouples the control plane from the forwarding plane—making the software more adaptable and flexible.
- ZTNA
Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) is a Zero Trust Security framework that secures your enterprise network and minimises the surface attack—enabling passwordless authentication, better visibility, and granular access control and policies.
- VoIP
Voice over IP (VoIP) is a networking protocol that enables voice connections over the broadband internet—encoding telephonic data in network packets and sending them to their destination over the internet instead of traditional phone networks.
- NaaS
Network as a Service (NaaS) is a network delivery model for cloud-based networking services—allowing companies to deploy and manage their own networks through the service provider’s maintained infrastructure.
Conclusion
With the new online security threats and vulnerabilities emerging each day, it’s important to keep up with the technological trends and remain vigilant to ensure high network security.
If you want to ensure the utmost network security, check out InstaSafe Zero Trust solutions to protect your multi-cloud environments and provide a seamless user experience.