Insider Threat

What is an insider threat?

An insider threat originates from within an organization in which an individual uses their authorization to harm the organization, whether intentionally or not. These individuals are often employees, but they can also include former employees, contractors, or other associates granted access to the organization’s proprietary resources.

To prevent internal users from taking malicious or negligent actions within their systems and protect company assets, organizations use insider threat management (ITM) software.

Types of insider threats

Insider threats come in many forms, but all typically fall under one of the following three types:

• Malicious: The threat is intentional, with bad actors who have legitimate access to their organization’s credentials acting with malice. Malicious insider threats include espionage, retaliation, corruption, etc.
• Negligent: These insider threats occur when insiders engage in risky operational behaviors. 
  This could include holding the office door open for someone who does not need to scan a badge, losing a thumb drive containing proprietary information, or sending work documents to a personal device, which expands the organization’s attack surface beyond its security perimeter, among others.
• Accidental: The most common insider threat, accidental threats occur when an employee simply makes a mistake, which exposes the organization to threats.
  Employees using weak passwords, mistyping email addresses, being tricked by a phishing scam, accidentally downloading ransomware, and other threats often pose security threats to organizations.

Impacts of insider threats

Insider threats can impact organizations in a variety of ways, including:

• Theft: The most straightforward impact is theft. Threats caused by insiders, whether malicious or otherwise, typically result in the loss of data, information, money, or other assets. Other assets can include sales leads, itineraries, physical property, and more.
• Loss of trust: Often, once the results of an insider threat are known to an organization, that organization is required to break the news to its members. 
  This is the case with credit card companies, banks, and other financial institutions, as well as additional organizations that house sensitive information, like hospitals. Knowing a trusted business has been affected by an insider threat often damages its reputation among customers.
  
  
• Policy review: To mitigate future threats, enterprises often review and update their policies. This includes revamping IT policies, physical security systems, employee asset usage, and more. Such a comprehensive review and change implementation can cost the organization money allocated for something else.

Insider threat best practices

To prevent insider threats as much as possible, follow these best practices:

• Assess risks: Enterprises must survey what they have at stake, including all data, hardware, and physical assets malicious actors would want to steal or careless employees might accidentally expose. To that end, organizations need to secure their infrastructures by using passwords, key cards, multifactor authentication methods, and more.
  Another standard step is exposure mapping, in which organizations comprehensively understand their attack surface. Once understood, InfoSec teams can create robust security measures to guard all of their organization’s assets, both physical and digital; this defense barrier is called a “security perimeter.”

• Enforce policies: It is imperative InfoSec teams develop, test, and monitor employee compliance with security policies designed to thwart insider threats. A myriad of policies should be enforced that work together to mitigate insider threats at every point threats have the chance to damage an organization. Organizations often enforce password policies that require employees to change their passwords every 30, 60, or 90 days.
  Additionally, InfoSec teams often bake in security features to the organization’s email servers that identify suspicious messages or warn employees that they are about to send information outside of the company’s security perimeter. Organizations must create action plans for employees who continually fail to comply with security standards to mitigate threats.

• Train employees: Most insider threats are not malicious. The best way to handle any security issue is to mitigate them in the first place. Training staff to identify risky behavior that puts their organizations at risk can mitigate negligent insider threats.
  Equipping them with information that allows them to identify suspicious emails, malicious links, or other tricky data exfiltration tactics helps prevent accidental insider threats.

Through careful monitoring, continuous assessment, and dutiful policy enforcement, organizations of all sizes can better mitigate insider threats. Doing so prevents data losses and allows enterprises to maintain consumer confidence. 

Learn about how InfoSec teams use employee identity theft protection software to combat cyber threats.