Computer Security Threats: Physical and Non Physical Threats
Oliver Jones
⚡ Smart Summary
Potential security threats to your computer systems range from physical disasters and hardware theft to malware, phishing, ransomware, and AI-driven attacks. Identifying these risks early helps you build layered defenses that protect data and operations.
A computer system threat is anything that leads to loss or corruption of data or physical damage to the hardware and/or infrastructure. Knowing how to identify computer security threats is the first step in protecting computer systems. The threats can be intentional, accidental, or caused by natural disasters.
In this article, you will learn the most common computer system threats and how to protect against them, including 2026 risks such as AI-powered attacks, supply chain compromises, and ransomware-as-a-service.
What is a Security Threat?
A security threat is any risk that can potentially harm computer systems and the organization that owns them. The cause may be physical, such as someone stealing a computer that contains vital data, or non-physical, such as a virus attack. In this tutorial series, a threat is defined as a potential attack from a hacker that allows unauthorized access to a computer system.
What are Physical Threats?
A physical threat is a potential cause of an incident that may result in loss or physical damage to the computer systems.
The following list classifies the physical threats into three main categories:
- Internal: Threats include fire, unstable power supply, humidity in the rooms housing the hardware, and similar environmental risks.
- External: Threats include lightning, floods, earthquakes, and other natural events.
- Human: Threats include theft, vandalism of the infrastructure or hardware, disruption, and accidental or intentional errors.
How to Prevent Computer Cyber Security Threats?
To protect computer systems from the physical threats listed above, an organization must put physical security control measures in place.
The following list shows some of the possible measures that can be taken:
- Internal: Fire threats can be prevented through automatic fire detectors and gas-based extinguishers that do not use water. An unstable power supply can be mitigated by voltage controllers and UPS units. Air conditioning helps control the humidity in the computer room.
- External: Lightning protection systems can be used to protect computer systems against lightning strikes. They are not perfect, but they reduce damage significantly. Housing computer systems on high ground is one way of protecting them against floods.
- Humans: Threats such as theft can be prevented through locked doors, surveillance cameras, and restricted access to computer rooms.
ManageEngine Vulnerability Manager Plus is a powerful vulnerability assessment and management tool that provides end-to-end coverage for vulnerability scanning, detection, assessment, and remediation. It helps organizations proactively identify security weaknesses across their network, prioritize threats based on risk severity, and automate patch deployment to strengthen their security posture.
What are Non-Physical Threats?
A non-physical threat is a potential cause of an incident that may result in:
- Loss or corruption of system data
- Disruption of business operations that rely on computer systems
- Loss of sensitive information
- Illegal monitoring of activities on computer systems
- Cyber security breaches and reputation damage
- Regulatory fines and legal exposure
Types of Non-Physical Threats
Non-physical threats are also known as logical threats. The following list shows the most common types:
- Virus: A virus is a computer program that attaches itself to legitimate programs and files without the user’s consent.
- Trojans: A Trojan horse is a program that allows an attacker to control the user’s computer from a remote location.
- Worms: A worm is a malicious computer program that replicates itself, usually over a computer network.
- Phishing: Phishing is a technique of extracting confidential information from bank or financial institution account holders through illegal means.
- Key loggers: Keylogging refers to monitoring or recording every keystroke registered on a keyboard without the device user’s knowledge.
- Denial of Service Attacks: DoS is an attack used to deny legitimate users access to a resource such as a website, network, or email, or to make it extremely slow.
- Distributed Denial of Service Attacks: DDoS is a type of DoS attack performed by many compromised machines that all target the same victim, flooding the network with data packets.
- Spyware and Adware: Programs that secretly track activity or display unwanted advertising.
- Unauthorized access to computer system resources such as data or admin consoles.
Ways to Prevent Non-Physical Threats
To protect computer systems from the threats above, an organization must have logical security measures in place. The following list shows some of the controls that help mitigate cyber security threats.
To protect against viruses, Trojans, and worms, an organization should deploy modern endpoint protection software. In addition to anti-virus software, organizations should control the use of external storage devices and block visits to sites that are likely to drop unauthorized programs onto user computers.
Unauthorized access to computer system resources can be prevented through strong authentication methods. These can include user IDs and strong passwords, smart cards, biometric scans, or multi-factor authentication (MFA).
Intrusion-detection and intrusion-prevention systems can be used to protect against denial-of-service attacks. Web application firewalls, rate limiting, and traffic-scrubbing services add further protection.
AI-Powered Cyber Attacks in 2026
Generative AI has made classic threats more effective. Attackers use large language models to write fluent phishing emails in any language, clone voices for vishing calls, and produce deepfake videos for CEO-fraud scams. AI also helps them scan code for vulnerabilities and generate polymorphic malware that evades signature-based antivirus.
- Deploy AI-driven email security that detects tone and intent, not just known signatures.
- Verify high-risk payment or credential requests through a second trusted channel.
- Add liveness checks and call-back verification to defeat voice and video deepfakes.
Supply Chain and Third-Party Threats
Supply chain attacks are one of the fastest-growing categories of computer system threats. Instead of attacking a target directly, adversaries compromise a trusted vendor, open-source library, or managed-service provider, then ride that trust into thousands of downstream systems. A single poisoned package can cascade into a global outage.
Practical defenses include maintaining a software bill of materials (SBOM), verifying dependency hashes, restricting third-party access with zero-trust segmentation, and monitoring vendor posture continuously.
Ransomware-as-a-Service Trends
Ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) has industrialized extortion. Affiliates rent encryptors, leak sites, and negotiation portals from criminal operators, lowering the technical bar for attacks. Double and triple extortion are now standard: attackers encrypt data, threaten public leaks, and launch DDoS against victims who refuse to pay.
To reduce ransomware risk, keep offline and immutable backups, test restores regularly, patch internet-facing systems quickly, segment networks, enforce least-privilege access, and deploy endpoint detection and response (EDR) to spot lateral movement.
