What does apt mean in cyber security?

Question

Could somebody explain what is APT in cybersecurity?

Answer 1

APT- Advanced Persistent Threat is a term coined to describe an attack done on governmental organizations or big corporations by an intruder or teams of intruders having huge financial backing. These attacks are plotted to amass huge amounts of sensitive data from its network by staying in the network until the end objective is achieved. This is very different from hit and runs cyber attacks in which the attacker attacks and steals the information and then use it for his personal gain, but instead this is a kind of planned, manual, and not an automated attack on the institution’s network or server to steal data as Intellectual Property like trade secrets or patents or could delete the database or by taking over the whole website. These attacks are with a mission to infiltrate the whole of the network rather than any single part of the network and collect sensitive information, all this without getting noticed by the security systems put in place.

APT’s could be divided into 3 phases which comprise infiltration or intrusion then expansion of the attacker’s presence and at last the extraction process of the required data. 

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