Cyber Security Threats to Your Computer Systems

5 min read by RAWAD IT Solutions

Anything that causes data loss or corruption, as well as physical harm to the hardware and/or infrastructure, is considered a computer system threat. The first step in defending computer systems is to understand how to recognize computer security threats. Threats could be planned, incidental, or generated by natural disasters.
In this article, we’ll go over some of the most frequent computer system dangers and how to secure your systems from them.

What is a Security Threat?

A security threat is a threat that has the potential to harm computer systems and organizations. The cause could be physical, such as a computer containing sensitive information being stolen. It’s also possible that the cause isn’t physical, such as a viral attack. We’ll define a threat in this tutorial series as a potential hacker attack that allows them to gain unauthorized access to a computer system.

What are Physical Threats?

A physical danger to computer systems is a potential cause of an occurrence that could result in data loss or physical damage.

The following list classifies the physical threats into three (3) main categories.

• Internal: Fire, an unstable power source, humidity in the rooms containing the technology, and other risks are among the dangers.
• External: These threats include Lightning, floods, earthquakes, etc.
• Human: Theft, vandalism of infrastructure and/or hardware, disruption, and intentional errors are among the threats.

Physical security control methods are required to safeguard computer systems from the physical dangers mentioned above.

The following list shows some of the possible measures that can be taken:

• Internal: Automatic fire detectors and extinguishers that do not need water to put out a fire could help to prevent fires. Voltage controllers can be used to prevent an unstable power supply. The humidity in the computer room can be controlled with an air conditioner.
• External: Computer systems can be protected from such threats using lightning protection devices. Although lightning protection systems are not perfect, they do minimize the risks of lightning causing harm to some level. One of the possible strategies to protect computer systems from floods is to house them in high lands.
• Humans: Threats such as theft can be prevented by use of locked doors and restricted access to computer rooms.

What are 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

Logical threats are sometimes known as non-physical threats. The following is a list of non-physical threats that are found commonly:

• Viruses: Viruses, I’m sure we’ve all heard of them. A virus is a harmful program that continuously duplicating itself in order to cause computer system damage. When your system is infected with a virus, its usual tasks are disrupted, and over a period of time, your system becomes unusable. The point is, how many of us truly take steps to protect our systems against viruses? How many of us have licensed antivirus software installed on our computers? It’s barely three out of ten, which is a shame.
• Phishing: Never be fooled by a fake website that offers you a variety of attractive deals in exchange for all of your personal information. This is known as phishing. Such attacks are designed to steal all of your vital information, such as personal information, bank account information, credit card numbers, and so on, in order to take your identity.
• Trojan: Trojan is one of the most difficult threats to deal with. It has the ability to take all of your bank account information and data from your online transactions. Viruses like Zeus and SpyEye are extremely powerful and can quickly break your protection system. In security/virus scans, Trojan is never found. It is essential to keep your computer free of such malware.
• Worms: Threats like this are designed to absorb your hard drive and memory space. Worms are programmed to duplicate at a faster rate in computer systems and to spread from one to another. The spread is so big that it causes your system to malfunction.
• Spyware: This type of attack is designed to keep record of all activities and information sent throughout multiple transactions. If you are infected, the spyware will most likely spy on your daily activities or specific activities, and it will find a way to contact the malware’s host.
• Wabbits: Wabbits is a self-replicating malware that does not disturb the normal operation but consumes memory and space in your system.
• Exploit: Exploit targets a specific flaw in the user’s system. For example, if your system has an outdated plug-in, an attacker will try to hack into it to capture all of your data and information so that it can be misused later.

An company must have logical security controls in place to safeguard computer systems from the risks outlined above. The following is a list of some of the possible solutions against cyber security threats.

Anti-virus software can defend a company from viruses, Trojans, worms, and other malware. In addition to anti-virus software, an organization can put limits on the use of external storage devices and visits to websites that are most likely to download unwanted software onto a user’s computer.

Authentication methods can be used to prevent unauthorized access to computer system resources. User ids and strong passwords, smart cards or sensors are examples of authentication methods.

To defend against denial-of-service attacks, intrusion detection and prevention technologies can be used. There are other safeguards that can be implemented to prevent denial of service attacks.

Summary

• 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.