Imagine you are sitting in your office on a normal day. But suddenly, the entire office network will be compromised.
Now there could be any number of reasons why this could happen. One of them may be an employee opening an email from an unknown source that contains malware. And all your office data has now been breached.
This is one form of insider threat caused by the negligence of one of the employees.
According to IBM’s 2023 Report, data breaches caused by internal threats tend to incur the highest costs, averaging around USD 4.90 million. This figure is 9.5% higher than the average cost of USD 4.45 million for other types of data breaches.
Let’s talk about it in more detail. Buckle up.
What is an Insider Threat?
In simple words, insider threat refers to the risk that someone in an organization can misuse access or knowledge to harm the organization. This harm may be intentional or accidental and may affect the organization’s security, confidential data, or overall operations.
Types of Insider Threats
Insider threats come in many forms, each presenting unique risks to organizations. Here are the different types of insider threats:
An unintentional threat
accidentally: Sometimes insiders make honest mistakes that can still jeopardize security. Examples include sending emails containing personal information to the wrong people or mistakenly clicking on bad links.
Negligence: This happens when an insider, who knows the security policy, chooses to ignore it. For example, it may allow unauthorized persons to access secure areas or lose devices containing sensitive information. They can also neglect software updates, exposing organizations to vulnerabilities.
Intentional threats
These insiders intentionally damage the organization to gain revenge or revenge. Motivations can include dissatisfaction due to dissatisfaction, lack of recognition, or in response to layoffs. Harmful behavior can range from leaking confidential information and sabotaging equipment to stealing proprietary data or even acts of violence in the workplace.
Collusive Threats
In these scenarios, insiders work with external parties, such as cybercriminals, to harm the organization. This collaboration may lead to fraud, theft of intellectual property, or espionage. These threats are particularly dangerous because they combine internal access with external criminal intent.
Third Party Threats
The threat comes from individuals such as suppliers who, although not full-time employees, have access to organizational facilities or digital networks. The individual may present a direct or potential risk, by acting or being manipulated by external entities.
Key Risks and Challenges Insider Threats
Insider threats are difficult for several reasons:
- Authorized access: Insiders have legitimate access to the organization’s infrastructure, which can be abused.
- Knowledge of Location of Sensitive Data: Insiders often know where sensitive data is stored, making it easier to access and potentially exfiltrate this data.
- Expertise with Cyber Security Systems: Having internal knowledge of cybersecurity defenses makes it easier for insiders to discover and exploit weaknesses.
Gartner identifies three main types of activity related to insider threats:
- Fraud: This includes misusing assets for personal gain, conducting phishing campaigns, and committing misrepresentation.
- Data Theft: Execute unauthorized data transfer from company system.
- System Sabotage: Changing critical system configuration to disrupt normal operation.
How to Detect Insider Threats
Detecting insider threats involves monitoring unusual digital behavior and activity that deviates from normal patterns. Because insiders already have legitimate access to systems, distinguishing malicious activity from ordinary tasks can be challenging.
Here’s how organizations can detect potential insider threats by observing behavioral and digital indicators:
Behavioral Indicators
Monitoring behavior patterns can help identify potential insider threats. Look for:
- Dissatisfaction or Disgruntlement: Employees or contractors who appear disaffected or express dissatisfaction with the organization.
- Bypassing Security: Attempts to bypass security measures or exploit system vulnerabilities.
- Unusual working hours: Regularly work at times when few or no other employees are active, such as evenings or early mornings.
- Hatred of Co-Workers: Expressing negative feelings or hostility towards co-workers.
- Policy Violations: Frequently breaks company rules or ignores established protocols.
- Career Moves: Discuss your resignation, show signs of looking for work, or talk about opportunities elsewhere.
Digital Indicator
On the digital front, certain activities can signal an insider threat:
- Unusual entry times: Accessing the system at odd hours, such as logging into the network at 3 AM for no valid reason.
- Increase Network Traffic: A spike in transferred data that may indicate large-scale data theft or unauthorized copying of data.
- Irregular resource access: Using files, applications, or databases that are outside of normal work requirements or accessing restricted areas.
- Frequent Access Requests: Repeatedly requests access to resources that are not appropriate for their tasks.
- Invalid device: Using unapproved hardware like USB drives can be used to secretly extract data.
- Active Search for Sensitive Data: Engage in network crawling or systematic searches for confidential or sensitive information.
- External Data Transmission: Sending sensitive data outside the organization via email or other transfer methods.
How to Protect Against Insider Threats
You can protect your organization’s digital assets from internal threats. Here’s how.
Protecting Critical Assets
To protect your organization from insider threats, start by identifying and prioritizing your critical assets. This includes networks, systems, confidential data, facilities, and personnel.
You should focus on applying higher security measures to those you consider most critical. You should also establish specific protection protocols that match the importance and sensitivity of each asset to ensure full coverage.
Establish a Baseline of Normal Behavior
Organizations should implement sophisticated monitoring systems that collect and analyze user activity data. This data comes from various sources such as access logs, VPN logs, and endpoint data. Analyzing this information is essential to model typical user behavior patterns.
It also helps determine a risk score for activities that may indicate a threat, such as unauthorized data downloads or logins from unusual locations. By establishing behavioral baselines for each user, device, job function, and title, organizations can quickly detect threats.
Increase Visibility
Increase organizational visibility by continuously monitoring and correlating activities from multiple sources. This continuous monitoring helps detect possible insider abuse. Additionally, it uses cyber fraud technology to set traps for bad insiders.
Such traps can reveal their tactics and intentions. Using this integrated approach will improve your ability to effectively detect and respond to insider activity.
Doing Wisdom
Make sure your organization’s security policies are clearly defined and well documented. This clarity eliminates confusion about expected behavior. Regularly review, update, and communicate this policy throughout the organization.
This ensures that every employee, contractor, vendor, or partner knows what is considered acceptable behavior. Taking these steps is essential to creating and maintaining a safe environment.
Promoting Cultural Change
Fostering a security-aware culture is critical to preventing insider threats. Implement regular training and awareness programs to educate employees and stakeholders about security best practices and the importance of following them.
In addition, continuously measure and improve employee satisfaction. This helps identify early signs of discontent that can lead to insider threats.
Insider Threat Detection Solutions
Use custom insider threat detection software that seamlessly integrates with existing security systems to create a complete monitoring solution. This software must be specifically designed to detect signs of insider tampering or abuse.
Optimizing detection systems to minimize false positives. This ensures that your focus remains on the right threats, thereby increasing the effectiveness of your security measures.
Examples of Insider Threats
- A Fired Employee Retaliates
In 2021, Juliana Barile, an employee at a credit union in New York, responded to her layoff by deleting more than 21GB of data within 40 minutes of being fired. This data includes 3,500 directories and 20,000 files, some of which include critical anti-ransomware software and mortgage applications. Even though he was stopped, his access to sensitive systems was not immediately revoked, allowing him to also access secret board minutes and other sensitive information.
- Intentional Data Exposure by Employees
An employee at Vertafore, a technology company, accidentally exposed the data of 27.7 million Texas drivers by storing it in an unsecured offsite location. Although the breach did not involve financial or social security data, it still had serious consequences for Vertafore. The company must cover the costs associated with responding to the incident and also face class-action lawsuits.
Summing up
Insider threats to an organization can come from anyone. These threats range from deliberate sabotage to inadvertent errors and are often difficult to detect. They have the potential to cause significant damage. So, organizations need to monitor their employees’ activities at all times. In addition, by preparing for these risks, organizations can better protect themselves. This helps prevent severe disruptions that can be caused by insider threats.
