Threats to Computer and Data Systems Today

Introduction

Safety of information is the most valuable asset in any organization particular those who provide financial service to others. Threats can come from a variety of sources such as human threats, natural disasters and technical threats. By identifying the potential threats to the network, security measure can be taken to combat these threats, eliminate them or reduce the likelihood and impact if they should occur.

Hacking

Outsider attackers often called hackers because they gain access to system without authorization or permission from the owners or legitimate user. With information technology, comes increase risk of fraud and information theft. Hackers can steel sensitive information from one organization and sell it to a competitor or rival to damage their integrity and operations. Financial organization are one of the main target for hackers. Their objectives to prove they can crack security codes or for personal gains such as to commit fraud, theft, alter or delete financial records. The most popular methods used today to break into a system are network spoofing, password cracking and taking advantage of any security weaknesses or vulnerability in the system. There ultimate goal is often achieved through denial of service attack.

Password cracking is a sneaky method used by hackers to gain unauthorized access to system through someone’s account. According to www.msdn.microsoft.com network systems are at high risk when the password selected is weak; they are easy to guess by hackers such as date of birth, family name or child’s name.

On The 1st of February 2013, Twitter announced it had been subjected to unauthorised access attempts over the course of a week. Attackers were trying to gain user account information suc...

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...e every six weeks.

Case study

The public website of a financial services provider was attacked using SQL injection. Poor design of the site's technical configuration made it vulnerable to the attack. This resulted in the attackers sending a large number of "phishing" emails to staff. This caused a lot of disruption for about a day. After the attack, the company changed its website configuration and trained staff on security risks.

Conclusion

People have no control over natural disasters such as recent hurricanes, floods and fire. These incidents cause serious damage to a computer system, hardware and network. Companies can experience loss of information, denial of access to service, downtime that can cause severe interruption to the normal operation and running of the organization. Without access to PCs, staffs will not be able to perform the duty required of them.