Computer security and computer misuse
Computer security (and cybersecurity, its online side) means judging the risks to computers and data and reducing them. Computer misuse is using ICT to harm people, businesses or governments. Paper 1 names a misuse and asks for its term: an employee selling company secrets to a rival is industrial espionage.
By the end of this page you can
- Name and describe the main kinds of computer misuse
- Say who is harmed: an individual, an organisation or a government
- Use vulnerability, threat, attack and countermeasure correctly
- Assess the impact of a misuse
Goals tick themselves off as you try the activities below.
Photo: Chris Lappas, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped (company logo and phone details removed), company name blurred, JPEG q80.
A phishing email: urgent, vague, and built to make you hand over your password.
How often it shows up in past papers
All papers11 of 14 papers
Last 55 of 5 · 2019–2025
Paper 1 counts come from our past-paper bank of CSEC Information Technology Paper 1s. The last-5 row shows how often it came up in the five most recent papers.
Inside this topic
- Kinds of misuseLocked
- Four security wordsLocked
- Key termsLocked
- Test yourselfmarkedLocked