# Introduction

Many computing devices can be connected to the internet almost anywhere and at any time. As a result protecting against attacks and preventing the leak of private and confidential information has become ever more important.

On top of this, the reasons behind attacks are becoming more diverse – ranging from financial gains and retaliations through to influencing political campaigns and disabling infrastructure. Anyone can be a victim of cyber-attacks.

In this course, you’ll look at cyber security from the perspective of a computer user. Through a set of case studies you’ll analyse various types of attack, look at what lessons can be learnt from major incidents and consider what security measures you should apply to protect yourself. To help you to follow the case studies, the same framework has been adopted to analyse and explain each attack. Each case study will answer the questions:

1. What was the attack?
2. How did it work?
3. Who were the attackers?
4. What lessons can be learnt?

This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course TM255 Communication and information technologies.

OpenLearn - Learning from major cyber security incidents
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