security threats

 SECURITY THREATS

In context of computers, the term security refers to the protection of system resources from intentional or accidental disclosure, destruction, or modification. These resources include infrastructure, hardware, software applications, files and directories, the data stored in the database, and the data in transit.

 Different types of security threats, which can be:

• Network security
•  threats Attacks

Network Security Threats

Based on their sources, security threats can be broadly categorized into human threats and threats caused by natural calamities. 

Natural Calamities 

Security threats from natural calamities include damage caused to network systems due to floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, and fire. This may result in the loss of information, system downtime, or damage to hardware. For example, if the organizational premises of an organization are destroyed due to flood in the area, the computer resources will become unusable. The operations would stop and there is a possibility that critical data is lost. This may amount to huge losses to the organization. 

Human Threats

 Human threats include threats from the users of a computer system on a network or on the host machine. Human threats can be further categorized into intentional and unintentional threats. 

Intentional Threats

 Intentional threats include threats from the internal and external users of a computer system. The motive behind intentional attacks is to delete or alter important information, commit information theft, cause damage to 

the resources, commit fraud by impersonation, or disrupt the normal, day-to-day business activities of an organization. 

External users include hackers. A hacker is a person who breaks into a system on a network without owning the appropriate authorization. Hackers discover the vulnerabilities of a computer system on the network and exploit these weaknesses to gain control of the system. After taking control of the system, hackers can easily access confidential information and manipulate the resources of the system on a network. For example, a hacker can attack an e-commerce website and gain access to the credit card numbers provided by the users of this website. 

Unintentional Threats 

Unintentional threats are threats from ignorant users who perform certain tasks without knowing the impact of their actions. These threats are usually from employees who are not trained to use computer systems and are unaware of the security threats and vulnerabilities. For example, a data entry operator may key in erroneous data, which may affect the consistency of the data stored in a database. Another example is that of a programmer who may develop an erroneous application that may cause the system to stop responding

Different Types of Attacks

• Viruses Worms
•  Trojan horse
•  Man-in-the-middle attacks
•  Denial-of-service (DoS)
•  Password-cracking
•  Sniffing
•  Spoofing 
• Email hacking