Cyber Security

5 CYBER THREATS

If you want to hit a country severely you hit its power and water supplies. Cyber technology can do this without shooting a single bullet.

Isaac Ben-Israel, Major General, Israeli Air Force

In this chapter, we shall examine the various types of threat that individuals and organisations face, including types of attacker, types of attack, the motivations for and the benefits of launching an attack, the risks involved in doing so and how attacks typically are conducted.

There are a number of terms associated with cyber threats that are worth exploring before we look into the types of threat in greater detail:

• Threat source or sponsor is the person or organisation that wishes to benefit from attacking an information asset. Threat ...