dep = data execution prevention
put simply, before its existance, code could be executed from the stack and/or memory areas... now, those areas have to be marked as 'executable' for the system to allow it to run, if dep is enabled and a program tries to execute from the stack or from a memory area that is not marked as executable, it generally results in a crash / error appearing and the program being terminated
some old protections did this, running code from the stack (safedisc and securom in particular), which is why in windows xp sp2 and higher, there is a 'handler' for this in the pe loader which enables dep for those executables...
Data Execution Prevention - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia