Cyber Threat
A cyber threat is an act of compromising the security of an information system by modifying the Confidentiality, Integrity & Availability (CIA) of the data or the system it contains.
Threat actor groups
Cyber Threat actors are groups that may pose a cyber threat to the Organization who is intending to do reputation damage or for fame for individual or revenge on the government or organization takes advantages of available vulnerabilities & technologies to gain unauthorized access to the information system in order the exploit the sensitive data for money or fame to the external world.
Different Types of Cyber threat actors
All relevant threat actor groups that may pose a cyber threat to your organisation,
- Hacktivists – are ideologically, politically & socially motivated to target the victims for publicity or the huge societal changes to happen. Usually to target corporates & governments.
For Example : Anonymous Group, Legions of the underground, the Syrian Electronic Army, etc., are some of the known hacktivists groups.
2. Cybercriminals – are largely represented as the long-term, global and common threat who steal data for money, hold sensitive information for ransom or financial gains. They usually work individually or in groups to achieve their targets.
For Example: Ransomware, Phishing attacks, Social engineering attacks, Website Defacement etc.,
3. Insider Threats – are individual who works inside the Organizations and tries to infiltrate the sensitive data from inside are most dangerous because they are authorized to access their company internal asset and information which could be exposed.
For Example: Employee inside the company trying to upload sensitive data to third parties through emails etc, Data exfiltration & Privilege misuse are the common techniques used to send critical information outside the organization for monetary gains or seeking revenge on the current company.
4. Nation-state actors – they aggressively target Private & public sectors to exfiltrate and compromise sensitive information with the help of government organizations for obtaining the nation’s secrets. They are mostly motivated by Nationalism by gaining the secrets of other nations through a cyber watch.
For Example: Spying on Obama during the presidential election campaigns in 2008 by Chinese & Russian hackers allegedly installed spyware to monitor the presidential candidate’s data & steal sensitive information.
5. Cyber terrorist group – it is considered to the most national risk to the governments. While the targets might be banks, governments & utilities like Water, oil, electricity, gas, chemicals, etc., as these attacks can cause a huge economic loss to the national infrastructure.
For Example: Defacement of government websites using Denial of service attacks. And compromising the credit cards of the customers from the reputed Banking industry.