Threats to Computer System
- Anything that may cause data loss or corruption, physical harm to hardware and/or infrastructure, or both is a danger to the computer system. The first line of defense for computer systems is understanding computer security risks. Threats may be deliberate, unintentional, or the result of natural calamities.
- Danger to Security
- A security threat is any danger that has the ability to compromise an organization’s or computer systems. A physical cause may be someone taking a computer that has important information. A viral infection is one example of a non-physical potential cause. For the purposes of these tutorials, a threat is any prospective hacker attack that might provide them access to a computer system without authorization.
- Dangers to the Body
- A physical danger is a possible source of an occurrence that might cause the computer systems to be physically damaged or lost.
- The physical dangers are divided into three (3) primary groups in the list below;
- Internal: The hardware rooms are damp, the power supply is erratic, and there is a risk of fire.
- External: These dangers include of earthquakes, floods, and lightning, among others.
- Human: These dangers include theft, hardware and/or infrastructure destruction, interruption, and unintentional or deliberate mistakes.
- An company needs physical security control mechanisms in place to safeguard computer systems from the physical risks outlined above.
- Some of the potential actions that may be done are included in the list below:
- Internal: Automatic fire detectors and extinguishers that do not use water to put out a fire might help reduce fire hazards. Voltage controllers may be used to stop an unreliable power source. The humidity in the computer area may be managed using an air conditioner.
- External: Computer systems may be shielded from these types of assaults by using lightning protection devices. Although they are not infallible, lightning protection devices do lessen the likelihood that lightning may cause harm. Putting computer systems in high-lying areas is one approach to shield them from flooding.
- Humans: Using closed doors and limiting access to computer rooms may help against threats like theft.
Non-physical threats
A non-physical threat is a potential cause of an incident that may result in;
- Loss or corruption of system data
- Disrupt business operations that rely on computer systems
- Loss of sensitive information
- Illegal monitoring of activities on computer systems
- Cyber Security Breaches
- Others
The non-physical threats are also known as logical threats. The following list is the common types of non-physical threats;
- Virus
- Trojans
- Worms
- Spyware
- Key loggers
- Adware
- Denial of Service Attacks
- Distributed Denial of Service Attacks
- Unauthorized access to computer systems resources such as data
- Phishing
- Other Computer Security Risks
To protect computer systems from the above-mentioned threats, an organization must have logical security measures in place. The following list shows some of the possible measures that can be taken to protect cyber security threats
To protect against viruses, Trojans, worms, etc. an organization can use anti-virus software. In additional to the anti-virus software, an organization can also have control measures on the usage of external storage devices and visiting the website that is most likely to download unauthorized programs onto the user’s computer.
Unauthorized access to computer system resources can be prevented by the use of authentication methods. The authentication methods can be, in the form of user ids and strong passwords, smart cards or biometric, etc.
Intrusion-detection/prevention systems can be used to protect against denial of service attacks. There are other measures too that can be put in place to avoid denial of service attacks.
- A threat is any activity that can lead to data loss/corruption through to disruption of normal business operations.
- There are physical and non-physical threats
- Physical threats cause damage to computer systems hardware and infrastructure. Examples include theft, vandalism through to natural disasters.
- Non-physical threats target the software and data on the computer systems.