Cyber bad actors surround all organizations. Identify at least 3 sets of bad actors that will impact your case study, discuss their techniques and motivations
Cyber bad actors
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Cyber bad actors
There is a wide range of cyber bad actors that compromise organizational operations and functions using different motivations and techniques, and thus they should be countered to ensure effective and efficient operations in the organization. The bad cyber actors operate in the form of individuals, groups, and states with different malicious intentions such as unauthorized access of data, destruction, deletion, or alteration of data at the expense of the holder of data. The bad cyber actors are in a position to access the network system and computers by taking advantage of low cybersecurity awareness, existing vulnerabilities in the system, and network using advanced technological development to gain access to the system. The bad cyber actors adopt different techniques backed with motivations to gain unauthorized access to the computer and network system with malicious intentions.
Organized crime groups
The organized crime group consists of groups of people and criminals that illegally access the intending to make money from the cyber. The organized crime has unauthorized access to the organizational systems, network, and computers to make money from it through theft and sale of data to interested parties, flatting out of ransomware, or low-risk cryptojacking (Taylor, Fritsch and Liederbach, 2014). These activities make it easy for organized crime groups to make illicit money on online platforms. For instance, ransomware attacks targeting multinationals, local governments, and small scale enterprises and perpetuated by organized criminals have increased over the years, thus soliciting money from the affected organization. Therefore, the organized groups are bad cyber actors that illegally interfere with organizational operations for a financial gain.
Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups
The APT groups have increasingly been engaged in cyber warfare operations to interfere with each other military, econ9mic, political, and commercial infrastructure. The ATP groups are formed by nations to undermine each other infrastructure (Cole, 2012). The APT operations are conducted to have competitive advantages among rival nations on aspects of economics, politics, military power, and overall wellbeing. In this regard, the APR groups are access the cyber systems and networks of their rivals to implement IP theft, political manipulation, industrial spying. The APT group access and manipulate the information and strategic infrastructure of the rival groups or nations to gain a competitive advantage over them.
Hacktivists
Hacktivists pool resources together intending to bring an issue, organization, or person to the interest of the public through negatively or positively disclosing critical information (Dahan, 2013). The hacktivist gets unauthorized access in the business or organizational system, network, or computers to retrieve positive or negative information that can result in promotion or criticism for the organizations, respectively. For instance, different hacktivist groups such as LulzSec and Anonymous have caused challenges to organizations and businesses by exposing them. Additionally, the government of Thailand and the Philippines or organizations like the CIA, have been targeted by the various hacktivist groups. The hacktivist groups gain unauthorized access to gains information and data on organizations with the different agendas on the subjects, such as promoting them or negatively presenting them to the public.
Conclusion
Different cyber bad actors gain unauthorized access to organizational and business systems, networks, and computers to retrieve data and information to be used in their interests and at the expense of the businesses and organizations. The different cyber bad actors include organized crime groups, hacktivists, and advanced persistent groups.
References
Cole, E. (2012). Advanced persistent threat: understanding the danger and how to protect your organization. Newnes.
Dahan, M. (2013, March). Hacking for the homeland: Patriotic hackers versus hacktivists. In ICIW 2013 Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Information Warfare and Security: ICIW 2013 (p. 51). Academic Conferences Limited.
Taylor, R. W., Fritsch, E. J., & Liederbach, J. (2014). Digital crime and digital terrorism. Prentice Hall Press.
