Industry acronyms spelled out

Confused by industry acronyms? Or maybe you just need to know more about a particular industry term such as PBX, ENUM & DNSsec.

What is DNSSec?

DNSSec (short for DNS Security Extensions) is a technology that adds security to the Domain Name System. It is a hierarchy of cryptographic signatures that assure the integrity of DNS queries by providing origin authentication of DNS data, data integrity and authenticated denial of existence. These measures protect against tampering in caches and transmission and enhance infrastructure security, thereby contributing to increased trust in the Internet – as well as the systems, services and markets that rely on its secure operation.

What is PBX

A PBX (private branch exchange) is a telephone system within an enterprise that switches calls between enterprise users on local lines while allowing all users to share a certain number of external phone lines. The main purpose of a PBX is to save the cost of requiring a line for each user to the telephone company's central office.

The PBX is owned and operated by the enterprise rather than the telephone company (which may be a supplier or service provider, however). Private branch exchanges used analog technology originally. Today, PBXs use digital technology (digital signals are converted to analog for outside calls on the local loop using plain old telephone service).

 

What is ENUM

ENUM is a standard adopted by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that uses the domain name system (DNS) to map telephone numbers to Web addresses or uniform resource locators (URL). The goal of the ENUM standard is to provide a single number to replace the multiple numbers and addresses for an individual's home phone, business phone, fax, cell phone, and e-mail.