Cyber Attacks
…are unwelcome attempts to steal, expose, alter, disable or destroy information through unauthorized access to computer systems.
Picture: Wiki Commons
…so what is it?
Cyber attacks can be associated with concepts such as cyber warfare or cyberterrorism, like hacktivists. They mainly target businesses.
Motivations can vary. Common categories include criminal, political and personal motivations. These can be attacks from outsiders, but also people internal to an organisation.
Criminally motivated attackers seek financial gain through money theft, data theft or business disruption. The personally motivated, such as disgruntled current or former employees, will take money, data or a mere chance to disrupt a company’s system. Socio-political motivated attackers seek attention for their causes. As a result, they make their attacks known to the public—also known as hacktivism.
Other cyber attack motivations include espionage, spying—to gain an unfair advantage over competitors—and intellectual challenge.
What we do as an LRF…
- Work with Business and Local Authority leads to ensure cyber and BC plans are kept up-to-date.
What you can do to help us…
- The primary aid is an effective cybersecurity system
- A threat management strategy identifies and protects important assets and resources, including physical security controls for developing appropriate safeguards
Name: LCC Cyberattack
Date: 26/01/16
What happened?
Lincolnshire County Council suffered a suspected cyber attack via email, attempting to extract sensitive data held on their servers unless a levy were paid via Bitcoin. Council IT services were disrupted, and the majority of the workforce has to ‘power down’ to avoid compromise and protect data.
This caused a few impacts on council services – including the limited operation of their Customer Service Centre. IT security systems identified the threat, and staff worked through the night to identify, remove, and cleanse systems (including 458 servers).
As a result of security systems in place, vigilant staff, and quickly enacted cyber plans, council services were fully resumed without data loss.
Photo Credit: Case: Flick Commons: 1 Image: snapped via Twitter
