How to Deal With Insider Threats In Cyber Security

Most businesses implement IT infrastructures to streamline their information and data storage, seamlessly accommodate customer inquiries and requests, and ensure overall business continuity. There’s no question that as a business in these modern times, it is extremely important to secure your network resources and safeguard your mission-critical systems, preventing critical disruptions in the form of cyberattacks from within and outside the enterprise.

Understanding Insider Cybersecurity Threats in a Nut Shell

An insider threat is carried out within an organization by a bad actor who has authorized access to the business’ network resources, database, and applications. It is a malevolent cyberattack that could come from an imposter posing as an employee, a contractor, a partner within the business, or any temporary worker. However, it can only be a party that has legitimate access to the company’s online and offline assets. In addition, these malignant attacks can also pose a significant threat in the form of jeopardized service accounts.

Why should businesses prepare for insider threats? That’s a good question. Well, the motivation behind cyberattacks carried out by authentic users may vary. For example, the perpetrators may intend to steal your company’s valuable data and sell it to your competitor for a hefty financial gain.

Similarly, the intention could be to dismantle your business operations through systematic espionage. Moreover, it could also be carried out as a brutal form of retaliation by a former “disgruntled” employee. However, insider threats can also become a reality owing to poorly managed or implemented security systems or an exposed access point. While these types of security threats are more prevalent in specific industries such as healthcare, finance, or federal institutions, they can compromise the overall security of any type of company, big or small.

Types of Insider Cyber Security Complications

An Embedded Bad Actor

This can typically be an employee or a contractor who has access to your network database and digital assets and plans on intentionally disrupting your business operations. These types of attacks are based on opportunity and reward.

The malicious individual will look for ways to discreetly steal your information to sell it to willing buyers on the dark web or your competitors. However, the employee may also do this as a fast-track way of manipulating your system for their career-oriented gains. Moreover, it can also be an angry worker who has been let go and wants to exact revenge and is looking for ways to hurt your reputation and bottom line in one fell swoop. 

A good example is the case of data theft perpetrated by ex-Apple engineers who stole the company’s data about autonomous systems earlier in 2023. They were caught and convicted. Investigations revealed that the ex-engineers planned on selling the information to a technology company in China.

Insider Threats Caused by Negligence

Insider cyber security threats can also be caused by sheer procedural negligence. For instance, your employee may be too carefree when it comes to leaving their computer without signing out – a clear breach of security protocols. Similarly, an IT administrator can be just as ignorant, continuously putting off changing the default password to your data mainframe or neglecting to update the necessary security patch.

All of these things can cause a bad actor or hacker to gain easy access to your network resources and steal your data. A massive data breach occurred in 2006 when a data analyst took a hard drive of the company (illegally) with the information of more than 26 million U.S. military veterans. The hard drive was stolen in a subsequent home burglary, and all data was leaked online. 

Should You Be Concerned as a Business Owner?

Absolutely. Insider cyber security threats should be a considerable matter of concern for all types of businesses, as they can cause massive data breaches, compromise customer information, reveal company secrets and critical data, and much more.

These threats can potentially deal a pretty deadly financial blow to any type of company. Not to mention, it is also going to destroy your reputation. You’d be surprised to know that from 2020 to 2022, reports reveal a 43%+ increase in the number of insider cyber security attacks. They are also the predominant cause of information breaches (up to 60%). 

Things You Can Do to Prevent Cyber Security Complications of This Potent Nature

Keep Track of Your Digital Assets and Resources Via the Environment

Businesses need to implement a thorough and precision-based inventory of all their online and offline assets via their IT infrastructure. Your inventory should comprise onsite resources along with all the data stored on the cloud ecosystem. In addition to this, ensure that you’re using a cutting-edge cybersecurity system to monitor and secure mission-critical or sensitive information.

Your data and assets should be categorized so they can be accessed more efficiently and with more oversight. Plus, access to critical data network assets or resources should only be given to vetted and authorized individuals who essentially need access to perform their daily tasks.

Furthermore, even if it becomes necessary to share the access with other employees, be sure to maintain a sophisticated IAM (identity and access management) system, tracking and restricting access only to those who are authorized and no one else.

Create an Inclusive Data Management Protocol 

You should also implement a comprehensive data management policy that comprises data and information that has been thoroughly categorized, marked, and identified. The security protocol must clearly mention who the authorized individuals are and the types of data resources they have access to, along with when and from where they are going to access the network. Anyone caught violating these policies must immediately be investigated and, if found guilty, should be subjected to legal action.

Provide Your Teams With the Necessary Data Management Training

It’s very important to adequately train your employees on how to responsibly carry out their roles in protecting the company’s digital assets and resources. Engaging them in industry best practices is going to help substantially reduce the chances of data negligence, further minimizing any risks of insider cyber security threats. In addition, trustworthy workers will take advantage of this, ensuring they make no mistakes while managing data. On the other hand, it can be used as a trap for potentially malicious employees, who will try their best to ignore these trainings, thereby exposing themselves.

Constantly Track Your Systems to Identify Insider Threat Factors

While a lot of insider cyber security threats will typically take place from bad actors operating within the business, providing your teams with the right data security training, and highlighting the point of risk can make a huge difference, often minimizing the incidences of a security breach by malicious employees or contractors.

Understand that insiders constantly and deliberately attempt to subvert the cyber security of a company to destroy its reputation from the inside over extended periods. However, with the necessary checks and balances put into place, you’ll be able to quickly weed out these bad actors whenever they try to commit any suspicious or unnecessary behavior.

By preemptively carrying out company-level investigations into suspicious activities in your business’ IT ecosystem, you can easily eliminate or reduce the risks posed by malicious parties, keeping your sensitive data and files airtight. In light of this, let’s look at some potential indicators of insider threats in cyber security. These are all the ways you can know that a suspicious employee is making a move against you:

• Dubious login activity at unreasonable hours or constant attempts to gain access to classified systems.
• Consistent efforts to access sensitive data or network applications.
• Irrational or unreasonable download activity that may point to an attempt to breach sensitive data.

Put a Data Loss Prevention Protocol in Place

One of the best advantages of a data loss prevention protocol is that you’ll be able to identify and eliminate different types of insider cyber security threats by automating your company’s data handling policies. What this does is put up a powerful barrier to block bad actors from “accidentally” attempting to log in to your critical network resources or reduce any risk of the malicious employee staging a mishandling of your resources.

Why Businesses Choose Corporate Technologies to Manage Their Insider Threats to Cyber Security

At Corporate Technologies, we implement state-of-the-art threat detection algorithms to evaluate and keep track of your employees’ digital footprint across a variety of different data systems. Our threat identification and elimination solution continuously tracks any suspicious activities, keeping a bird’s eye view for any signs of suspicious activity – for example, an illegal attempt to breach your company’s mission-critical data outside of business hours.

Our comprehensive security platform is also consistently on the lookout for bad actors who are attempting to download and export classified files. Our cyber security services fortify your current security ecosystem, preventing anyone from attempting to steal your data.

How Businesses Can Benefit from Our Avant-Garde Insider Threat Detection Platform

• Giving you a 360-degree barrier against a slew of different types of insider threats.
• Quickly identifying lateral movement of cyberattack via email from one malicious user to another internal or external user.
• Automatically filtering emails that may contain potentially damaging insider threat indicators.
• Determining and stopping a potential malware attack or breach, preventing it from spreading across your company’s IT infrastructure.