What is Threat?

Understanding Threat

The potential for a threat-source to exercise accidentally trigger or intentionally exploit a specific vulnerability. A threat is any potential danger to an asset capability intention or action that could cause harm to an information system or organization. Threats can come from human sources accidents natural disasters malicious code or other origins. Understanding threats is fundamental to risk assessment and security planning. Threat analysis is central to frameworks like NIST Risk Management Framework ISO 27005 and FAIR. Organizations identify and analyze threats through threat intelligence threat modeling historical data environmental scanning and industry collaboration. For example an energy company might conduct a threat assessment identifying nation-state actors as a primary threat source due to their capability motivation and intent to target critical infrastructure prioritizing controls to address sophisticated persistent attacks while also planning for natural disasters equipment failures and insider threats. Related terms Threat actor Threat source Threat vector Threat intelligence Vulnerability Risk Threat assessment Threat modeling Risk assessment.