Potential Threats

Potential Threats

1. Deliberate Misuse

   • Internal - employees with access to information systems who decide to act against the organisation (use knowledge to cause damage or defraud the organisation for financial gain)
   • External - Criminals wishing to defraud the organisation, viruses, rival organisations, hackers

2. Accidental abuse

   • Internal - an organisations employees may accidentally compromise data security or integrity
   • External - natural disasters or when an organisations acquires software that has undiscovered bugs in it

3. Faulty Hardware

   • Loss of power can cause problems and can cause data loss
   • Scratches on the hard disk - if you don't shut down the machine properly the head crashes on the spinning platter causing scratches which can damage data and you may not be able to access it

4. Natural Disasters

   • Earthquakes, lightning, floods, tidal waves, volcanoes, gales
     • Thankfully these are a rare occurrences but they can cause immense damage and even total destruction of computer equipment

5. Theft

   • Computer theft involveds a theif stealing the computer or other hardware
     • If a computer is stolen then the hardware, software and data will be lost