One of the most critical activities an organization engages in is protecting its valuable data resources from being compromised or misused. When considering the threats that can impact an IT environment, the first thought is often directed toward external entities like hackers or organized cyber criminals.
Unfortunately, insider threats also pose a significant risk to a company’s valuable data assets and intellectual property. According to TechJury.net, more than 34% of businesses worldwide are affected by insider threats each year, and Ponemon's 2022 Cost of Insider Threats: Global Report found that insider incidents grew by 44% from 2020 to 2022, making it a prevalent and growing concern for companies.
In fact, 66% of businesses say they consider malicious or accidental insider attacks more likely than external cyber attacks.
This post discusses insider threats, highlights some real-world examples of insider threats, and how they can affect a business. We’ll also look at the heightened danger of insider threats and how implementing a data loss prevention (DLP) solution can help mitigate their risk.
In this article:
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security defines an insider threat as the threat that an employee or a contractor will use their authorized access, either intentionally or accidentally, to harm the security of an IT environment.
Insider threats can come from trusted employees or third-party contractors hired to perform specific tasks for a company. Virtually anyone in an organization can present an insider threat.
Typically, there are numerous individuals within an organization who require a level of authorization that allows them to access and process sensitive information.
In a perfect world, there would be no danger of this access being misused in any way. Unfortunately, in the real world, there are significant risks associated with the potential threats posed by insiders.
Organizations need to protect themselves against two different types of insider threats: malicious insiders, unintentional or accidental insiders, and negligent insiders. All of these are extremely dangerous and can put a company’s data resources and its ability to conduct business at risk.
Malicious insider threats occur when an individual makes deliberate attempts to compromise, steal, or corrupt enterprise data. They may leverage elevated permissions to access sensitive data resources that are not in the scope of their job.
A malicious insider may take advantage of security lapses that can then be used to access valuable data surreptitiously. In some cases, the insider may also be responsible for misconfiguring the security controls that allow their unauthorized access.
The following are some examples of malicious insider threats.
Unintentional or accidental insider threats come from trustworthy employees who inadvertently put enterprise data resources at risk. In this case, the responsible individual is unaware of the risk that accompanies their activity.
The following are some examples of accidental insider threats.
Negligent insider threats differ from accidental insider threats in that the responsible individual is aware of the proper security procedures but disregards them or takes shortcuts that bypass security measures, putting sensitive company data at risk.
The following are some examples of negligent insider threats.
The most common type of insider threat is the accidental insider threat. While not every insider is a threat, anyone who handles sensitive data presents a risk.
Accidental insider threats occur when employees or individuals unintentionally compromise data security through careless actions. These actions can include mistakenly sending sensitive information to the wrong recipient, falling victim to phishing attacks, or improperly disposing of confidential documents.
It is crucial for organizations to invest in employee training and awareness programs to minimize the occurrence of accidental insider threats and foster a security-conscious culture.
Insider threats present a substantial danger to any organization that has valuable data stored in its IT environment. They are harder to guard against than external threats for several reasons.
Insider threats can have severe consequences for businesses, including:
To better understand the impact of insider threats, let's look at a few real-life examples:
A data loss prevention (DLP) platform can be an instrumental component of a comprehensive strategy to protect an organization against the risks of insider threats. A modern DLP solution such as the Reveal Platform by Next automates the enforcement of an organization’s data handling policy.
Forcing a data handling policy to be followed by everyone in the organization protects against insider threats in two ways.
Reveal provides endpoint agents powered by machine learning that identify anomalous behavior and protect enterprise data. Using multiple behavioral analytics algorithms to define typical vs. anomalous behavior patterns, Reveal delivers data protection that doesn’t rely on a connection to a separate analysis engine while all personal data remains on the device.
Additionally, Reveal uses pseudonymization and other data minimization techniques and enables security teams to conduct scoped investigations of insider threats without compromising employees’ data privacy and confidentiality, fostering a positive security culture built on trust. The solution also furnishes user training at the point of risk with real-time alerts designed to reduce the risk of data loss.
Implementing Reveal ensures that data resources cannot be deliberately or accidentally misused.
Talk to the DLP experts at Next and schedule a demo to see how Reveal can help protect your organization from the risks of insider threats.
Insider threats are hard to address proactively because a subset of employees require elevated privileges to perform their job duties. Therefore, limiting all access to sensitive data resources is impossible. There is always the potential for accidental or deliberate misuse of enterprise data by an employee or contractor.
Traditional security measures are insufficient to address insider threats because they are focused on keeping unauthorized entities out of a computing environment. These defensive tactics consist of firewalls and intrusion detection solutions that identify external attempts to disrupt the infrastructure. They do not have the defensive capabilities to guard enterprise data resources from individuals who have already gained access to the environment.
Developing a data handling policy enables everyone in an organization to understand how specific data elements can be accessed and used. The policy can be used as the foundation of a DLP solution that automatically enforces the defined limitations on data access. In this way, a data handling policy is essential for protecting sensitive information from being misused by insiders.