7 Information Technology (IT) Buzzwords You Can’t Afford to Ignore in 2025

Buzzwords are thrown around constantly in technology media, and the changing landscape of technology means there’s always a new set of terms to learn. It can feel overwhelming, but buzzwords and “fads” often turn into the revolutionary technologies of tomorrow. How do you determine what’s worth your attention and what are passing fads.

We’re here to help.

We’ve compiled a list of 7 IT buzzwords you’ve probably heard. However, you may not know exactly what they mean, why they’re important, and how they relate to your business.

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI)
2. Chatbots
3. Digital Transformation
4. Zero Trust
5. SIEM/SOAR
6. Compliance-as-a-Service
7. Immutable Data Backups

Having a more complete understanding of these technology buzzwords means you’re able to take advantage of the increased productivity, security, and risk mitigation that comes along with them.

Let’s jump in.

1. Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence, more than anything else on this list, is the buzzword on everyone’s lips. In the world of AI, you may also hear terms such as ChatGPT, Machine Learning (ML), Generative AI (GenAI), and Deep Learning. But what are they and what can they actually do for you?

Let’s take the new Microsoft Copilot AI, for example. Many businesses rely on Microsoft 365 to run their businesses or organizations, and Copilot integrates with that system. For example, you may have a prospects list in Excel that aggregates the most important information about your potential clients, but getting a holistic picture about those prospects in preparation for next quarter would take hours of work. With something like Microsoft Copilot, you can ask it to “summarize the sales potential of Q3” and it will deliver you that data in moments—saving hours that you can spend on harnessing that data rather than pulling it together.

AI tools such as Copilot can act like a trusted expert on your business with nearly instant recall of your important data, goals, communications, and more.

🔎 Related Resource: The Evolution Of Artificial Intelligence In Cybersecurity

2. Chatbots

Another technology that’s recently burst onto the scene in a massive way are chatbots combined with AI. Chatbots have been a lifeline to small businesses and municipalities by allowing them to expand their responsiveness to customers and residents without the expense of growing your customer service team.

Imagine that you’re a local water services provider and you need to do maintenance on a piece of critical infrastructure. Even with extensive notices mailed out in advance and signage posted around the affected area, the calls and questions will pour in. This can overwhelm even the most prepared customer service team, but chatbots can relieve much of that pressure. By autonomously solving simple inquiries and directing more complicated issues to the correct person on your team, your team’s time can be used more efficiently.

Most inquiries are simple questions like, “How long will my water be shut off?” or “When will a technician be out to deal with my issue?” Simple enough, but they take time from more important activities. A chatbot can handle these, and more complicated questions, while “knowing” when to hand things off to a human being.

3. Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is a prominent buzzword that means different things to different people in the media—and it often get defined too broadly. Think of it this way: When your business or organization replaces old, analog processes with digital technologies to enhance your operational efficiency and help you deliver value to customers, that is the most basic definition of digital transformation. It’s not just about buying new digital technologies and tools—digital transformation is a mindset shift as you leverage these technologies to challenge your status quo, increase your competitiveness, and become more agile.

For example, your business may transition from paper paychecks to a digital workforce and benefits management system that gives employees the ability to see their pay, retirement, tax, and insurance information in one place – while also providing your HR department with a powerful tool that simplifies their processes. Other examples may include:

• Transitioning on-premises servers and applications into the cloud.
• Placing sensors around a facility to gather data and automate formerly manual systems.
• Reengineering business processes through deploying a new ERP system.
• Leveraging your website, social media, and mobile apps more to conduct ecommerce and interact with customers.
• Equipping your workforce with digital technologies and tools to increase their productivity (such as tablets to use in the field instead of paper checklists).

With so many digital technologies being created, there are countless opportunities to leverage innovation to enhance how you operate.

4. Zero Trust

Trust but verify, right? What Zero Trust says is, “No, verify and then trust.” Vital systems are locked down and access filtered to only those who can prove their trustworthiness at the outset. Think Fort Knox, the White House, or Disneyland — if you can’t show why you should be there, you’re not getting in.

In a similar way, zero trust combines technologies beyond the standard firewalls and endpoint detection and response (EDR) into a system of proactive identity checks that protect your most vital systems and information. Strategies such as multi-factor authentication (MFA), permission restrictions based on role and location, and trusted application whitelisting wall off your systems. The premise: No one is trustworthy by default.

5. SIEM/SOAR (Security Information & Event Management / Security Orchestration, Automation & Response)

Acronyms can be difficult, and SIEM/SOAR sound like they are next-level complicated. Luckily for us, while the systems themselves are advanced, the concepts are actually quite simple.

SIEM and SOAR work together to monitor security alerts and anomalies from across your systems and log them. SIEM logs data and alerts from your servers, firewalls, VPN, email system, cloud applications, EDR, and more, creating a baseline of what normal operations looks like. That way, when SIEM detects an anomaly — unusual VPN traffic, or an employee accessing your network from another country — your SOAR system can snap into action and prevent any damage before it’s able to spread.

These logs also help with your response to and recovery from an incident. IT professionals can go back through the logs, look at criminal activity, and easily see any impacted data or machines. Better forensic data leads to better incident response and recovery. Just like a criminal case, the more evidence you obtain, the easier it is to convict a criminal.

SOAR immediately acts to contain the threat and alerts your IT team, allowing them to treat the problem at its root. These tools act together to give you early warning and immediate quarantine of threats, which can help stop a hardware failure, ransomware infection, or data breach from escalating and affecting all your systems.

6. Compliance-as-a-Service (CaaS)

When dealing with complex regulations and industry standards, the burden of complying rests upon your organization’s shoulders. Big companies and organizations have long had the resources for compliance teams that audit their systems, report to regulators, and provide suggestions for improvements in procedure. Small organizations were left to fend for themselves and make sense of the tangle of compliance information and requirements. Then came Compliance-as-a-Service (CaaS).

CaaS includes a suite of tools, services, and expertise that give you the benefits of a compliance team without the massive costs. To assess your current state, security professionals input the requirements from all your relevant compliance frameworks into one central location. A cloud-based software tool processes all that data and presents your compliance information within a dashboard that makes it easy to see your gaps and areas to prioritize.

Security professionals can then easily review your current alignment with various compliance frameworks, identify gaps, and give you a customized plan that includes recommendations on how to close the gaps. They also assist with implementing policies and procedures while monitoring progress and changes to any relevant compliance frameworks.

After the initial assessment and setup, the CaaS tool helps the CaaS team by automating compliance tasks, monitoring for issues (and alerting you when one arises), and automatically updating processes as regulations change. Security professionals are available 24/7 to support you while also providing ongoing consultation to help you navigate complex compliance issues.

🔎 Related Resource: 5 Areas Where Information Technology Can Improve Compliance

7. Immutable Data Backups

Hackers holding sensitive data hostage until they receive a massive payout seems to be growing in both frequency and severity. The costs to a business or organization aren’t just the actual money demanded. It’s the downtime, lost trust, IT and repair costs, and even potential action from regulators like lawsuits, fines, and the revocation of licenses.

Immutable data backups are an unchangeable secure backup of your systems and/or data that stays the same even if a bad actor were able to access it. Traditional data backups are alterable, and some implementations can even open the door for hackers to enter your network. Immutable data backups are separated from your network, so a cybercriminal accessing your data would not be able to alter or delete them.

If you were the victim of a cyberattack, this backup could be used to restore your systems to a pre-attack state with minimal effort. New immutable backups of your data are created regularly, so restoring your systems after a cyberattack won’t mean losing your most current data from the last few days or weeks.

Now, IT Buzzwords Can Work for You

When demystified, you see the real value of these new and emerging technologies, services, and software. Not only that, these IT buzzwords benefit more than just Fortune 500 corporations — they are real and attainable solutions for small businesses, municipalities, and organizations of almost any size.

If you’d like to know more about how we can help leverage the solutions on this list to help your organization achieve its goals, reach out any time.