In the course of commercialization, the Internet has now reached a breadth and intensity of use that was not even remotely imagined when it was developed. This is one of the reasons why security aspects played no or only a subordinate role in the original concept - when it was still a more or less closed network with universal trust - in the 1970s. The basic concepts remain unchanged to this day. However, the threat situation is different.

On the one hand, there is now, at least in the industrialized nations, an almost comprehensive IT network with an Internet connection, which means that there are also comprehensive points of attack for IT-supported logical sabotage and espionage attacks. At the same time, dependency on smoothly functioning IT is constantly increasing: more and more traditional processes are being replaced by IT-supported, networked processes. More and more critical data is being transmitted, processed and stored in computer networks such as the Internet. On the other hand, effective Internet-based attack methods have now been developed and published, and suitable sabotage and espionage tools are demonstrably available. The frequency of both scattered and targeted attacks from the Internet and on the Internet as an infrastructure is continuously increasing. One of the reasons for this is that the number of known critical vulnerabilities in standard products continues to rise and it is often no longer possible to rectify these vulnerabilities quickly enough.

It is therefore the responsibility of each individual to protect their private or work PC, their mobile devices, their servers and background systems as well as their local network against attacks from the Internet. The BSI supports you in this by publishing a wealth of information. Existing threats are explicitly named and specific measures to reduce the associated risks are recommended.