Types of cyber threats in Cybersecurity - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Types of Cyber Threats

📖 Scenario: You work in a small company's IT department. Your manager asks you to create a simple list of common cyber threats to help educate your coworkers about online safety.

🎯 Goal: Create a list of common cyber threats with their brief descriptions to share with your team.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary called cyber_threats with exactly these entries: 'Phishing', 'Malware', 'Ransomware', 'Spyware', and 'Denial of Service'.

Add a variable called threat_level and set it to 'High'.

Create a new dictionary called high_threats that includes only the threats with the threat_level of 'High'.

Add a final key-value pair to cyber_threats with the key 'Threat Level' and the value from threat_level.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Understanding common cyber threats helps individuals and organizations protect their data and systems from attacks.

💼 Career

IT professionals and cybersecurity specialists need to recognize and communicate about different types of cyber threats to maintain security.

1

Create the initial cyber threats dictionary

Create a dictionary called cyber_threats with these exact entries and descriptions: 'Phishing': 'Fraudulent emails to steal information', 'Malware': 'Malicious software that damages devices', 'Ransomware': 'Software that locks files until a ransom is paid', 'Spyware': 'Software that secretly collects user data', and 'Denial of Service': 'Attacks that overload systems to cause shutdown'.

Cybersecurity

# Create the cyber_threats dictionary with given entries
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces {} to create a dictionary with the exact keys and values given.

2

Add a threat level variable

Add a variable called threat_level and set it to the string 'High'.

Cybersecurity

cyber_threats = {
    'Phishing': 'Fraudulent emails to steal information',
    'Malware': 'Malicious software that damages devices',
    'Ransomware': 'Software that locks files until a ransom is paid',
    'Spyware': 'Software that secretly collects user data',
    'Denial of Service': 'Attacks that overload systems to cause shutdown'
}
# Add the threat_level variable below
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a simple assignment to create the variable threat_level with the value 'High'.

3

Filter threats by threat level

Create a new dictionary called high_threats that includes only the threats from cyber_threats where the threat_level is 'High'. Since all threats are considered high, copy all entries from cyber_threats into high_threats.

Cybersecurity

cyber_threats = {
    'Phishing': 'Fraudulent emails to steal information',
    'Malware': 'Malicious software that damages devices',
    'Ransomware': 'Software that locks files until a ransom is paid',
    'Spyware': 'Software that secretly collects user data',
    'Denial of Service': 'Attacks that overload systems to cause shutdown'
}
threat_level = 'High'
# Create high_threats dictionary copying all entries from cyber_threats
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a dictionary comprehension to copy all items from cyber_threats into high_threats.

4

Add threat level to the cyber threats dictionary

Add a new key-value pair to the cyber_threats dictionary with the key 'Threat Level' and the value from the variable threat_level.

Cybersecurity

cyber_threats = {
    'Phishing': 'Fraudulent emails to steal information',
    'Malware': 'Malicious software that damages devices',
    'Ransomware': 'Software that locks files until a ransom is paid',
    'Spyware': 'Software that secretly collects user data',
    'Denial of Service': 'Attacks that overload systems to cause shutdown'
}
threat_level = 'High'
high_threats = {key: value for key, value in cyber_threats.items()}
# Add 'Threat Level' key to cyber_threats with value threat_level
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the dictionary key assignment syntax to add the new key and value.