Making Sense of Cybersecurity Acronyms

Scott Davis, Quickpass‘ director of cybersecurity education, gave a keynote on making sense of cybersecurity “acronym soup.” Quickpass offers privileged access management (PAM) built for MSPs.

He said the cybersecurity industry is continually trying to overcomplex what should be simple solutions.

“We’re making it too confusing,” he said. “Vendors create confusion. We’re marketing and telling you what we’re doing, using acronyms, confusing you, and then you’re confusing clients. As vendors, as MSPs, you have to do a better job of educating what these acronyms mean.”

Many acronyms have numerous meanings, creating even more confusion, Davis said. For example, identity and access management (IAM) is just a large category, and inside of it is PAM and inside of PAM is privileged identity management (PIM).

It’s important to put it in simple terms, he said.