Threat
cyber threat · threat actor · threat source · malicious actor · menace
Any potential cause of an incident, whether an attacker, a piece of malware, a human error or a natural disaster, that could harm your systems or your data.
In practice
A threat only becomes dangerous when it meets an exploitable vulnerability: ransomware can do nothing against a machine that is patched, well configured and isolated. Threats can be deliberate (financially motivated criminals, states seeking intelligence, hacktivists, malicious insiders) or accidental (a slip of the hand, a hardware failure, a fire). Knowing which threats actually target your sector lets you prioritise your defences instead of trying to protect everything everywhere.
In its 2025 Cyber Threat Overview, France’s cybersecurity agency ANSSI reports handling 1,366 incidents. It highlights two broad families: state-linked actors, notably from Russia and China, focused on espionage or pre-positioning, and cybercriminals increasingly geared towards data theft.
