INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA THREATS Internal

INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA THREATS

Internal Threat • A threat originating inside a company, government agency, or institution, and typically an exploit by an angry or dissatisfied employee denied promotion or informed of employment termination. • Internal threats can be equally vicious and may also include blackmail or other illicit activities.

EXTERNAL THREATS • A threat originating outside a company, government agency, or institution. In contrast, an internal threat is one originating inside the organization—typically by an employee or “insider. ” • Examples of external threats include new and existing regulations, new and existing competitors, new technologies that may make your products or services obsolete.

EXTERNAL THREATS • Economic Threats • Economy can be considered an external threat to businesses because, no matter how hard a company works or how good its products are, economic conditions dictate a business's profit and success. Economic downturns can decrease the demand for goods or services on the consumer market. On the other hand, a robust economy will inspire more consumer spending and business growth. • Competitors • Competition is a significant external threat to businesses and is a product of the marketplace. A competitive market requires knowing who your competitors are. Competition serves as an external threat because businesses compete with other organizations for the same customers. In turn, this challenge can cause one company to flourish and the other to flop.

• New Technology • The technological field, with all of its advancements, can serve as a potential external threat to businesses. Technological changes can give companies a competitive advantage, leaving others behind. For instance, travel agencies were exposed to a technological threat when the Internet gave customers the ability to do their own research and make their own travel plans from their computers, thereby eliminating the need for travel agencies. Technological changes should be monitored to determine if there any direct threats to a business.

SOCIAL MEDIA THREATS – Social engineering: Today, ‘social engineering’ is one of the most prevalent social media threat and also the most popular tactic for cyber criminals. Social media platforms allow attackers to find personal information that can be used to target specific individuals. Using information from employee profiles, a fake account can be created to establish trust over time. Once the trust is built, the attacker might start asking for specific information, like internal server names, project names etc. – Targeted phishing Phishing (is a cyber attack that uses disguised email as a weapon) attacks: Such attacks are carried out to steal money or confidential information. This is an example of social engineering tactics, whereby attackers exploit fear and anxiety to get users to part with their money. Since these attacks are so specific and targeted, the chances of success are higher.

• Fake accounts: A person creates a fake profile to connect to random people who accept the request without knowing its consequences. . the fake account in this case, was successful in connecting with hundreds of people from various organizations, including military, government, and security firms.

– Celebrity name misuse: This is one of the popular social media threats of today. There have been several incidents of hackers registering a new account under the name of a celebrity. Such a fake account can be used to spread misinformation and rumors or to attract new followers that can later be spammed. The gravity of these threats lies in the fact that hackers can use social media to extract users personal information and misuse it. There is generally no real authentication process that links a virtual profile to a real life identity. Hence, authentication of identification is important to protect against these social media threats.

– Social media used for spreading spam : Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook are often used to spread spam. The growing popularity of shortened URLs is also giving rise to several social media threats. Cyber criminals often mask their links with a short URL making it difficult for the user to identify whether it is pointing to a legitimate or malicious site. This threat is a real possibility for social bookmarking and micro blogging sites, which are used to spread links and news in a very short span of time. – Confidential information leak: The scariest of all social media threats is where employees start revealing seemingly uncritical technical information to the public.