Cyber Threat Actors and Their Activities

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Meru University College of Science and Technology (MUCST) *

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MANAGERIAL

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Information Systems

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Nov 24, 2024

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Uploaded by kipketervictor40

Cyber Threat Actors and Their Activities Student Name Institutional Affiliation Date of Submission

Threat actors are malicious actors responsible for many cyber incidents against enterprises, governments, and other companies. They can range from individual hackers to organized crime groups and even state-sponsored actors. Some of the activities that threat actors carry out include malicious code injection, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, phishing, ransomware, and data theft. Malicious code injection involves injecting malicious code into a system, which can be used to gain unauthorized access to systems, steal data, or disrupt operations. DDoS attacks involve flooding a system with requests, which can cause the system to crash or become unavailable (Gebru & Damen, 2019). Phishing is fraudulently obtaining confidential information, such as passwords, by pretending to be a reputable organization. Ransomware is malicious software that encrypts data, making it inaccessible until a ransom is paid. And data theft involves the unauthorized copying of data from a system. One example of the potential for messing things up is the Target data breach in 2013. In this incident, threat actors were able to gain access to the Point of Sale systems in over 1,800 Target stores, stealing the payment card information of over 70 million customers. The threat actors could gain access to the Target systems because of weaknesses in the network security architecture. Specifically, the threat actors were able to exploit vulnerabilities in the remote access system, which allowed them to gain access to the Point of Sale systems. To prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future, organizations need to prioritize security by implementing measures such as password enforcement, two-factor authentication, and regular security updates (Mousavi & Mathew, 2020). Additionally, organizations should conduct regular security audits and vulnerability assessments to identify and address potential system weaknesses. Furthermore, organizations should provide security awareness training to their employees to make them aware of potential threats and how to respond to them. Finally,

organizations should establish incident response plans to help them prepare for and respond to potential security incidents.

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References Gebru, T., & Damen, M. (2019). A review of threat actors in cybercrime. International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection, 28, 1-13. Mousavi, S., & Mathew, P. (2020). Cyber threat actors: a comprehensive review. Computers & Security, 91, 101829.

Cyber Threat Actors and Their Activities

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