Cyber-security is very important to systems. It helps to protect the organization’s data and keep it safe from hackers. However, in some cases, there occur some threats which might threaten the security systems. These threats are not good and can lead to damage or massive losses in the organization. The following three threats will be discussed; malware, denial of service and phishing.

Malware

Malware can be simply defined as malicious software such as worms, spyware, viruses and ransom ware. Malware is often activated when an individual clicks on a malicious attachment or link. These links or attachments lead to installing of unwanted and dangerous software (Gupta, 2020). Research explains that malware once activated can lead to the following; installation of additional dangerous software, blockage of access of important network components, disruption of individual parts making the system difficult to operate and also covertly getting information by transmitting data from the hard drive. In most cases, malware comes from social engineering. Social engineering is a situation where an individual wants to give away his or her personal information. Another source of malware is emails and fake downloads.

Denial of Service

Denial of service can be simply explained as a type of cyber-attack that floods a network or a computer which later makes it impossible to respond to requests. A distributed denial of service does the same thing but in this case the attack comes from the computer network. Cyber hackers often employ a flood attack to derange the handshake procedure and carry out denial of service (Haque, 2021). Other techniques may be employed as well to carry out denial of service and in most cases cyber hackers use the time that a network is damaged to launch other attacks. This is a serious threat to a secure system which needs to be addressed.

Phishing

In simple terms, phishing is defined as any effort to fraudulently solicit personal data from a person or a company. In other cases phishing can be any effort to deliver malicious software, by pretending to be a trustworthy organization or business entity (Basit, 2021). In short, phishing uses fake communication such as invoices or emails to trick the receiver into opening it and doing the operations inside such as giving out a credit card number. It is important to note that the main goal of phishing is to steal sensitive data like log in information or credit card or to install malware on the individual’s machine.

References

Basit, A., Zafar, M., Liu, X., Javed, A. R., Jalil, Z., & Kifayat, K. (2021). A comprehensive survey of AI-enabled phishing attacks detection techniques. Telecommunication Systems, 76(1), 139-154.

Gupta, R., Tanwar, S., Tyagi, S., & Kumar, N. (2020). Machine learning models for secure data analytics: A taxonomy and threat model. Computer Communications, 153, 406-440.

Haque, M., & Krishnan, R. (2021). Toward automated cyber defense with secure sharing of structured cyber threat intelligence. Information Systems Frontiers, 23(4), 883-896.