Another aspect of information security that is really fundamental to what we do is thinking about the
different motives and goals and objectives that various entities might be carrying out against our organization
or our solution.
You see, we have a lot of job security.
Think about it.
If you're in information technology, you have a ton of job security because it is more important with
each passing decade for society as a whole.
But if you're in cybersecurity, in I.T., you're in a blazingly hot area because there's more and more
individuals that want to attack other systems than ever before for a wider variety of motivations than
ever before.
And more things are automated and more things are put on data networks now than ever before.
Everything's Internet based, it seems like.
So that's opening up a lot more attack services than ever before.
And we're just in a situation where cyber security is critically important and it will be more so with
each passing year.
Well, with that said, let's dive in to this discussion of some key information security principles
here involving what is the motivation, what is the goal and objectives of a particular attack.
Let's dig deep into this discussion.
So we need to understand that attacks really consist of three main things.
That is some motivation.
Now, motive is really another word for goal.
So think about it.
The goal what is the goal of this attacker?
And I'm going to paint a picture for you in a moment of what I was saying in the intro to this video,
and that this is just more varied than ever before.
Think about it.
It used to always be money, money, money, money, money, money.
Maybe occasionally someone was seeking to embarrass an organization.
But money was the dominating factor in cyber security attacks for the longest time.
And heck, let's face it, it still is one of those big motives and goals that we see today.
But there's plenty more I'll give you examples of in a moment.
Now, something else that must exist is a methodology.
So there must be an actual sequence of actions that are going to be taken in order to propagate an attack.
And how is this possible?
Well, a vulnerability.
So notice vulnerabilities are those weaknesses in systems, sometimes completely unknown to the organization
that owns the resource.
And this vulnerability becomes the point of attack and the way into a system.
And remember, if this wasn't scary enough, we're going to be discussing in this course in depth the
attacks that are a sequence of attacks.
So there's one attack that is motivated by this individual, and they have the methodology to do it
and they're coming in over some vulnerability.
But that is just the first attack.
That's stage one.
And then this allows them through maybe some type of perimeter defense system and then another attack
begins once that first attack is successful.
So we're going to be discussing a lot of this in much greater depth, of course, as we move through
the course.
But as promised, I did want to give you an idea of just some brainstorming.
I did.
And this by no means is a complete list.
But these are just some of those motivations that we see today.
And 25 years ago, I wouldn't have said it's stayed objectives like one, you know, nation state attacking
another 25 years ago.
I wouldn't have said it's to do ransom.
You know, it's for the payment of a ransom.
25 years ago, I wouldn't have thought about the propagation of someone's religious or political beliefs
as a reason to attack a system.
So notice this is not a complete list, but it really does paint a great picture for us of the variety.
Of motives that exist out there today.
We know there's always going to be plenty of new vulnerabilities that appear.
And so this is a recipe for disaster when we have a lot of people that are highly motivated.
Using tried and true methodologies to attack vulnerabilities and this is job security for you and I
on the team of good as we guard against this ever ever light propagating cycle of challenge in information
security.