Vulnerabilities and threat: cybersecurity is becoming increasingly important both in companies and in society in general, with a considerable increase in resources, efforts, etc., to protect and safeguard Information Security. To protect and safeguard Information Security.

When we start in this world, we find two terms that can confuse us, on the one hand, there are the vulnerabilities and on the other hand, the threats, today we will expand in detail each one and its importance to avoid risks.

Vulnerability vs Threat

It is true that, in the field of Information Security, vulnerabilities and threats usually go hand in hand, however, they are two completely different terms, hence the importance of knowing how to distinguish them:

Threat: an event with the potential to adversely affect an organisation’s operations or assets, “through unauthorised access to an information system, destruction, disclosure or modification of information and/or denial of service”.

Vulnerabilities: weakness in the security procedures of an information system. This weakness could be accidentally or intentionally exploited to violate the security controls or policy of that system.

In conclusion, threats represent a potential for harm while vulnerabilities represent a condition for that harm to materialise.

Did you know? A threat can become a vulnerability

This reflection is affirmative, i.e. if appropriate security measures are not applied through patches or software updates and adequate protection tools (anti-virus, anti-malware, etc.), threats can become vulnerabilities.

Cybersecurity Awareness

For all the above reasons, we must always be forewarned of potential threats. Hence the importance for companies to invest both in protection and in raising awareness among all their workers, training them and/or training them in the safe use of the technologies available to them, letting them know that any strange behaviour they may detect should be reported as soon as possible to the personnel in charge.

n many cases, it is the worker himself who unintentionally creates the vulnerability or facilitates the threat. Cybercriminals know this, and considering them as the weakest link, they are therefore the most susceptible to threats and attacks.

IT vulnerabilities and threats are a risk to enterprise systems and information.

Companies’ dependence on information technologies to carry out their main business activities has generated a high level of concern for cybersecurity.

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