How many acronyms are on the CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 exam?

The official SY0-701 exam objectives include an acronym appendix of 334 acronyms. You are expected to recognize these on sight, since the exam writes most concepts in their abbreviated form.

Do I have to memorize every Security+ acronym?

No — not blindly. Roughly 80 high-frequency acronyms (CIA, MFA, TLS, SIEM, IDS/IPS, PKI, RBAC...) carry most of the questions. Learn those cold, then recognize the long tail. Understanding what each one does beats rote spelling-out.

Where is the official Security+ acronym list?

It is the acronyms appendix at the end of the CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 exam objectives PDF, downloadable for free from CompTIA's website.

How Many Acronyms Are on the CompTIA Security+ Exam? (SY0-701)

If you are revising for the CompTIA Security+ (SY0-701) exam and wondering how big the acronym pile actually is, here is the short answer.

The short answer: 334 acronyms

The SY0-701 exam objectives ship with an acronym appendix listing 334 acronyms. The exam rarely writes a concept out in full — it expects you to read SIEM, RBAC or TPM and know exactly what each one means and where it fits. So the acronym list is not trivia; it is effectively a vocabulary checklist for the whole exam.

Security+ SY0-701 at a glance

Metric	Value
Acronyms in the objectives list	334
Exam domains	5
Questions (max)	90
Question types	Multiple choice + performance-based (PBQs)
Passing score	750 / 900
Time	90 minutes

The 334 acronyms are spread across all five domains — from General Security Concepts through Security Operations to Security Program Management and Oversight — so there is no single domain you can skip to dodge them.

You don't need to memorize all 334 equally

Here is the part most study guides get wrong. The 334 acronyms are not equally weighted. A core set of roughly 80 shows up again and again:

Foundations: CIA, AAA, MFA, PKI, RBAC, ABAC
Crypto & transport: TLS, AES, RSA, SHA, HMAC, PFS
Network & monitoring: IDS, IPS, SIEM, SOAR, DLP, NAC, VPN
Governance & risk: GRC, SLA, MTTR, RTO, RPO, BIA

Learn those deeply — what the technology does, when you'd choose it, how it fails — and you've covered the majority of acronym-driven questions. The remaining long tail only needs recognition, not a perfect spell-out.

How to actually learn them (without burning out)

Reading the list once does nothing. The two techniques that work:

Active recall — quiz yourself on the meaning, don't just re-read it. Seeing SOAR → Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response and saying it back is worth ten passive reads.
Spaced repetition — review each acronym right before you'd forget it, so the hard ones come back more often and the easy ones fade out of rotation.

That is exactly what a flashcard workflow is built for. The CompTIA Acronyms+ iPhone app ships the full SY0-701 acronym set with definitions, an exam mode, and spaced repetition so the 334 turn into long-term memory instead of a panicked night-before cram.

Bottom line

334 acronyms are on the Security+ SY0-701 list. Know the ~80 high-frequency ones cold, recognize the rest, and use active recall + spaced repetition rather than re-reading. Do that and the acronym appendix stops being scary and starts being free points.