Five years ago (it was actually October 11, 2021) CompTIA released an article on their blog called CompTIA Is Changing the Language Used on All Certification Exams: Here’s Why by Jessalynne Madden. I suppose the article aged out, but without the use of the Wayback Machine (www.archive.org) I have been unable to find the article in recent years. It is too bad, because it was well written, and I tell my students about it on a regular basis.
Occasionally my students ask me for specific terms, and I am happy to provide them. This week, I was asked if I could provide the complete list. I decided to write about it so that I would have my own reference.
I do not think this list is all-inclusive. As an example, what “used to be called” a Man-In-The-Middle attack is now referred to as an On-Path attack.
Why the quotation marks? Simple… we need to know the new terms for the exam, but anyone working in IT had better know the old terms as well, because they are not going away. I am not passing judgement; I am simply being realistic; changing the name of something does not change what people call it. That tall building in Chicago? You can rename it the Willis Tower all you want, most people will still refer to it as the Sears Tower. Where is Chicago? Well, it is somewhere between the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario. We need to know the new names for the future, but we also need to know the original names for the time being.
The list that I am including here is a direct copy and paste from that original article. As I mentioned, it is not inclusive. In my opinion, a few things were missed. For example, I suspect the language police would blow a gasket if they realized the origins of the term Honeypot.
I also wonder if they might change their minds somewhat if they realized that Black Hat and White Hat hackers have nothing to do with skin colour but are terms that pay homage to Spy vs. Spy comics in Mad Magazine.
I am disgusted by racists and racism, but I also believe that some attempts to change our language go too far. These last five years I have wracked my brains trying to figure out who is offended by the term DMZ… but alas, if CompTIA wants to call it a Perimeter Network (I usually call it a Screened Subnet) then sobeit… they write the exams, and I want my students to pass the exams, so I teach the new language… and the old.
With that said, here is the list. Thanks for asking!
| Old Term | New Term |
| DMZ | Perimeter network |
| Master/slave | Primary/secondary (or host/client if used in a network context vs. drives) |
| Hang | Become unresponsive |
| Blacklist | Network context: Blocklist or deny list Software context: Unapproved list |
| Whitelist | Network context: Allow list Software context: Approved list |
| Specific countries considered enemies of a country | Foreign adversary |
| Native | Built-in, default, inherent, standard |
| Black-box testing | Unknown environment testing |
| White-box testing | Known environment testing |
| Gray-box testing | Partially known environment testing |
| Black hat | Unauthorized |
| White hat | Authorized |
| Gray hat | Semi-authorized |
| Blackhole | Sinkhole, process vacuum |
| Black screen | Blank screen |
| Blackout | Power loss/power failure |
| Brownout | Under-voltage event |
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