advanced persistent threat

advanced persistent threat (APT), attacks on a country’s information assets of national security or strategic economic importance through either cyberespionage or cybersabotage. These attacks use technology that minimizes their visibility to computer network and individual computer intrusion detection systems. APTs are directed against specific industrial, economic, or governmental targets to acquire or to destroy knowledge of international military and economic importance. (Stuxnet, for example, would fall under this definition as an APT directed against Iran.)...