IntroductionInformation security is the most valuable asset in any organization, especially those that provide financial services to others. Threats can come from different sources, such as human threats, natural disasters, and technical threats. By identifying potential threats to your network, you can take security measures to combat them, eliminate them, or reduce the likelihood and impact should they occur. HackingExternal attackers are often called hackers because they gain access to the system without authorization or permission from the owners or legitimate user. With information technology, the risk of fraud and information theft increases. Hackers can steal sensitive information from an organization and sell it to a competitor or rival to damage its integrity and operations. Financial organizations are one of the main targets of hackers. Their goal is to demonstrate that they can crack security codes or for personal gain such as committing fraud, theft, altering or deleting financial records. The most popular methods used today to break into a system are network spoofing, password cracking, and exploiting any weak points or security vulnerabilities in the system. The ultimate goal is often achieved through a denial of service attack. Password cracking is a sneaky method used by hackers to gain unauthorized access to the system via someone's account. According to www.msdn.microsoft.com network systems are at high risk when the selected password is weak; they are as easy for hackers to guess as your date of birth, last name or child's name. On February 1, 2013, Twitter announced that it had experienced unauthorized access attempts over the course of a week. Every six weeks attackers attempted to steal user account information on...... middle of paper ......and. Case study A financial services provider's public website was attacked via SQL injection. Poorly designed technical setup of the site made it vulnerable to attack. This led to the attackers sending a large number of "phishing" emails to staff. This caused a lot of inconvenience for about a day. After the attack, the company changed the configuration of its website and trained staff on security risks. Conclusion People have no control over natural disasters such as recent hurricanes, floods and fires. These incidents cause severe damage to your computer system, hardware, and network. Businesses may experience loss of information, denial of access to service, downtime which can cause major disruptions to the normal functioning and operation of the organization. Without access to PCs, staff will not be able to carry out the tasks required of them.