The question of the degree of danger of an attack greatly influences the expenditure that one wishes to, or must, make on protection. You as a potential victim can assess whether your network is of particular interest to an attacker by means of the following criteria:
- At particular risk are networks of well-known companies or institutions, where valuable information may be available. This may include the research results that are of interest to industrial espionage, or bank servers that control large sums of money.
- However, the networks of smaller organizations are also at risk as they may be of interest to specific groups. The computers of tax consultants, lawyers or doctors certainly contain information that could be of interest to third parties.
- Last but not least, computers and networks are victims of attacks that offer no apparent benefit to the attackers. In particular "script kiddies", who test their abilities out of youthful ambition, are sometimes just looking for a defenseless victim as practice for tougher tasks. Attacking a private person's unprotected computer, which is not really very interesting at all, may serve as a starting point for attacks on the actual targets in the second step. The "uninteresting" computer becomes the starting point of the later attack, and the identity of the attacker is disguised.
All things considered, the statistical probability of an attack on the network of a global player is far greater than for a home-office network. But it is surely only a matter of time until a defenseless workstation on the Internet will, perhaps even accidentally, become the victim of attacks.