D1 Threats to data, information and systems GapFill

There are lots of organisations that hold data and information about you. When that data is specific to you, for example your name, date of birth and medical information, we call that  personalinfodirectservice data. Companies that use that data are  usingprocessingoperatingcorrecting your data. That data is very valuable to attackers who might want to  dedicateimpersonatetarnishuse you – for example they might want to log in to your social media or  emailroomtelephonemedia account to reset your passwords or steal credit card details to sell on the black market.

Therefore, companies must  attackpirateprotectuse your data from hackers and their increasingly sophisticated methods of attack.

The generic term for viruses, and related programs (worms and Trojans, etc.) is  vapourwaremalwarehardwareprograms. One form is a  viruswareransomworm which infects a file and spreads when the file is opened – for example it might delete files or attach itself to other files. A  warewormvirusRansom is designed to spread across networks slowing them down. A  TrojanfrontwormDDoS might pretend to me a useful program while sending data and logins back to the attacker, and might open up a back door for more malware to infect the system.

 RansomwareSpywareTrojansViruses is or are a relatively new type of malware where all of the users’ files are encrypted meaning that if there are no recent backups of the computer or server, when the files are lost if there is no payment made to the attacker to decrypt them.

We call people who distribute malware or who try to break into systems  authorsengineershackerscrackers. Their activity is usually illegal, unless they have been asked to try and break in to systems in order to find and fix security risks. Their goal may be to steal  phone handsetadvertisingcodecredit card details in order to sell on for profit, or might just want the prestige of breaking in to a system.

Sometimes you receive an email purporting to have been sent by your bank. This is done to try and gain real logins or account information and is called  hackingphishinghardwareshoulder surfing. Sometimes the email might tell you that your account has been hacked and you need to supply them with information in order to recover your money.

However, sometimes the damage is  maliciousaccidentalplanneddeliberate – for example deleting a file by mistake so saving over a file in error – hopefully  an updatea strategya backupa timestamp has been taken in order for the file(s) to be restored from.