Effective Incident Response Team, The

Consequences of Computer Attacks

Computer Intrusion, Unauthorized Access, or Compromise

A compromise occurs when someone gains unauthorized access to a computer resource. Typically, we tend to think of people outside an organization when discussing compromises. In reality, a compromise can also be accomplished by an authorized user of a system or an internal employee. For example, if a person is authorized to use a system and has set privileges at an end-user level, bypassing security countermeasures to increase that privilege level should be considered an unauthorized access or compromise. Additionally, if an internal employee gains access to a system that he or she is not authorized to use, that breach should be considered a compromise.

System ...