In the world of cyber security, there are a multitude of different ways that cyberattacks are able to penetrate barriers and get into vulnerable systems. There are almost too many to count but these are some of the most common/dangerous ones that you will see in the field. Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks, Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Attacks, Ransomware, Data Wiping Malware, and Zero-Day exploits. Each of these different types of attacks can be very dangerous and are classified as “attacks on availability”. You might be asking, “what is an attack on availability”. To explain it simply, an attack on availability is a targetted malicious cyber attack that disrupts and denies access to systems, networks, applications and data. The cyberattack then makes those systems unusable or inaccessible to legitimate users. These kinds of attacks can happen all the time, and even I have experienced such attacks while being online. I enjoy indulging myself in online gaming sometimes, and sometimes you will run into individuals who have the power to do some shady things with their technology. In this instance I was using my Xbox online to play some games, and suddenly while I was winning against my opponent. It seems that my internet begins to lag. But this isn’t any ordinary lag, I begin to lag to the point where my system disconnects from the internet, and in my head I have no idea what is happening. It turns out that the opponent that was losing the game decided discover my IP address and flood my internet connection with communication requests, making my internet unable to perform its normal functions. This process that just occurred is called a DDoS attack, and things like these happen all the time throughout the gaming community. My internet became unavailable after that for about two hours, so you can see how dangerous something like this can be. Since then I have upgraded my systems and bought a vpn in order to hide my IP address from strange individuals online, but even then I am not 100% secure online. While my example was on the smaller scale of things that can happen, huge companies and corporations can be vulnerable to these types of attacks as well. And most of the time, making their systems unavailable is not the end goal of the perpetrator. Attacks like these can even have economical impacts that disrupt systems widespread and affect national economies. And these attacks can even risk public safety, by them disrupting things such as powergrids and water systems.