Site Security Planning

Attacker Motives and Targets

Individuals and groups seeking to invade your site could be operating from any of a wide range of motives: to aid an organization competing against yours; to embarrass the site owners as a prank; to further a social cause (antitechnology, antibusiness); to get revenge (the attacker was fired, did not receive a bonus, hates the boss); or, to gain status among peers.

Intruders can attack any asset of value to your organization, such as the entire contents of the corporate database. Targets are not limited to trade secrets or information that could be sold illegally; they might also be servers or server-based services, such as e-mail.