An external threat includes: 1. * individuals outside an organization attempting to gain unauthorized access to an organization’s networks using the Internet, other networks, or dial-up modems. 2. * flooding a network with large volumes of access requests so that the network is unable to respond to legitimate requests, one type of denial-of-service attack. External threats include: lone hackers, organized crime groups, and government entities, as well as environmental events such as weather and earthquakes.