Insider Threat: A Cause of Business Digital Attack

The potential damages that an insider threat can cause are immense whether it be for personal gain or revenge but how dangerous are insider threats and what do they target?

An insider threat is a malicious threat to an organization that comes from people within the organization. Insider threats are people.  They are the employees, former employees, contractors, business partners, or even vendors – with legitimate access to a company’s networks and systems who knowingly and unknowingly, in some cases, exfiltrate data for personal gain or accidentally leak sensitive information.

Sometimes insider threats are more emotionally driven, such as bribe for exchange of code or network access, revenge for being fired, alter motive from the time of being brought on board.  But, not all insider threats steal information. Financial fraud and misuse of privileges is the most common form of insider threat.  It can also be a simple cause of phishing attack, social engineering, or weak cybersecurity practice of the business. A single fraudulent employee can bring an organization to its knees therefore it is incredibly important to prevent fraud and protect the workplace where most of our hours are spent, remote, hybrid or otherwise.  

Learn how to take measures to protect your business now!  Save yourself from hacks & scams.  Insider threats can be managed by policies, procedures and technologies that help prevent privilege misuse or reduce the damage it can cause. 

We have compiled a list of some of the best practices to mitigate risk and implement any or all that work for your company to prevent insider threats will help with minimizing the risk of your sensitive data being compromised:

• Establish physical security in the work environment
• Implement security software and appliances
• Implement strict password and account management policies and practices
• Monitor and control remote access from all endpoints, including mobile devices
• Harden network perimeter security
• Enable surveillance
• Enforce separation of duties and least privilege
• Recycle your old hardware and documentation properly
• Use a log correlation engine or security information and event management system to log, monitor and audit employee actions
• Implement secure backup, archiving and recovery processes
• Perform enterprise-wide risk assessments and have incident response plan
• Clearly document and consistently enforce policies and controls
• Educate security pros to understand insider threat motivations and actions
• Identify risky actors and respond promptly to suspicious behavior
• Define explicit security agreements for any cloud services, especially access restrictions and monitoring capabilities
• Develop a comprehensive employee termination procedure
• Include insider threat awareness in periodic security training for all employees
• Protect data by implementing insider threat monitoring technology

Accept that you cannot eliminate the insider threat completely, and implement an insider threat detection solution.  We are a phone call or email away and would be honored to assist you in implementing best cybersecurity practices suited for your company’s protection.