Think your business is safe from cyberthreats? While you may have advanced security measures to protect against external attacks, insider threats can often go unnoticed. Employees, vendors, and even trusted partners can unknowingly—or intentionally—put your business at risk. That’s why securing your business from within is just as critical as defending against external threats.
In this guide, we’ll explore the most common insider threats, how to recognize warning signs, and steps you can take to strengthen your internal defenses.
Common Insider Threats You Need to Know
Common Insider Threats You Need to Know
There are various types of insider threats, each with its own set of risks.
Here are some common threats:
1. Data theft:
Whether it’s downloading sensitive information for personal gain or leaking data for malicious reasons, data theft is a significant threat. This includes physically stealing devices or copying sensitive data digitally.Example: An employee of a healthcare provider downloads patient records and sells them on the dark web.
2. Sabotage: A disgruntled employee, an activist or somebody working for your competitor deliberately damages, disrupts or destroys your organization by deleting important files, infecting an organization’s devices or locking a business out of crucial systems by changing passwords.
Example: A disgruntled employee of a coffee shop deliberately tampers with the machine, causing malfunction and loss of business.
3. Unauthorized access: This is essentially a breach of security when malicious actors such as hackers or disgruntled employees gain access to business-critical information. However, individuals can mistakenly access sensitive data unknowingly, too.
Example: A malicious employee uses their login credentials to access privileged information and then leaks it to competitors.
4. Negligence & error: Both negligence and error lead to insider threats that can pose a security risk. While errors can be reduced through training, dealing with negligence would require a stricter level of enforcement.
Example: An employee might click on a malicious link and download malware, or they might misplace a laptop containing sensitive data. In both cases, the company data is compromised.
5. Credential sharing: Think of credential sharing as handing over the keys to your house to a friend. You can’t predict what they will do with it. They might just take some sugar or they might use your home for hosting a party. Similarly, sharing your confidential password with colleagues or friends throws up a lot of possibilities, including an increased risk of exposing your business to a cyberattack.
Example: An employee uses a friend’s laptop to access their work email. They then forget to sign off and that personal laptop gets hacked. The hacker now has access to the company’s confidential information.
Spot the Red Flag
It’s crucial to identify insider threats early on. Keep an eye out for these tell-tale signs:
- Unusual access patterns: An employee suddenly begins accessing confidential company information that is not relevant to their job.
- Excessive data transfers: An employee suddenly starts downloading a large volume of customer data and transfers it onto a memory stick.
- Authorization requests: Someone repeatedly requests access to business-critical information even though their job role doesn’t require it.
- Use of unapproved devices: Accessing confidential data using personal laptops or devices.
- Disabling security tools: Someone from your organization disables their antivirus or firewall.
- Behavioral changes: An employee exhibits abnormal behaviors, such as suddenly missing deadlines or exhibiting signs of extreme stress.
Enhance your Defence
Here are our five steps to building a comprehensive cybersecurity framework that will ensure your business stays protected:
1. Implement a strong password policy and encourage the use of multi-factor authentication wherever possible.
2. Ensure employees can only access data and systems needed for their roles. Also, regularly review and update access privileges.
3. Educate and train your employees on insider threats and security best practices.
4. Back up your important data regularly to ensure you can recover from a data loss incident.
5. Develop a comprehensive incident response plan that lays out the plan of action on how to respond to insider threat incidents.
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