Cybersecurity

The Importance of Understanding Insider Threat to Avoid Data Breaches

Instasafe

Jun 1, 2021 • 4 min read

COVID-19 is the primary cause for the change in the way we work. The meta of physically attending the organization has now shifted towards the internet via various remote and virtual platforms today. Dependency on the internet has increased, and so has the potential risk of threats for the employees and the organization.

Statista claims that In 2020, the opening year of the new decade also known as the ‘work-from-home year has experienced 1001 data breaches and 155.8 million data leakages just in the United States.

Employees are the assets as well as the weak chain of an organization. Insider threats in cyber security are the risk to an organization caused due to digital activity or behaviour of the employee. The elimination of insider threats is practically not possible. Yet, it is important to raise awareness about various aspects of such threats amongst the employee for a healthy relationship between employee and company and its valuable data and resources.

Threats caused due to different kinds of employees

Vindictive employee

Employees that willingly cause threats to the data and the system of the company for revenge or personal benefit are known as vindictive employees. Employees that are blackmailed or forced to cause threats also fall under the same category.

Casual employee

Naive employees with a careless or happy-go-lucky attitude are always vulnerable towards the sensitive topic of insider threat detection, prevention, and cybersecurity of the organization. This behaviour causes threats to the privacy and security of the company. These employees often leave their devices unprotected and unsecured, and it becomes easy for an external body to access the data of the company.

Accidental employee

When an employee’s credentials or system is compromised, they are termed as accidental employees. Hackers intend to steal employees’ credentials to enter the company’s system and leak the company’s confidential data to the competitor. These attacks are random and not employee-specific, employees with wide access to the system are most likely to experience such attacks.

CISO’s attention seekers

The Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) of an organization is responsible for insider threat detection, security, and preventive measures to sustain the security of valuable and confidential data.

Digital activities that can possibly attract CISO’s attention as a security breach are as follows:

Strive to access data or network for information/resources labelled as confidential or not required for your routine job.
Sharing large, sensitive information via portable devices or personal emails.
A casual attitude towards the security and awareness programs by the organization.
Suspicious resigning with poor or unsatisfied reasoning. Often employees steal the company’s collected data and information and join the competitors for extended benefits.

Possession of any of this behaviour can be a risk to your company as well as be the possible reason for the insider threats in cyber security of the organization.

Prevention over Elimination

The hackers are alleged to break the security of your company by various methods. It depends on the employees and security system of the company to respond to methods by taking some extreme cybersecurity measures. The data as per Stastisa also shows that phishing email is one of the leading causes of portal creation for hackers to enter the system. Phishing emails have grabbed the attention of the user and convinced 54% of them to respond to emails in 2020.

To prevent such circumstances where the company’s privacy and security are at stake, it is important to take the following measures for insider threat detection, to promote the safe and secure functioning of the company.

Organizing frequent cybersecurity awareness programs for the employees where the main focus is to create awareness to identify and avoid different methods used by hackers to enter the facility. i.e phishing emails, clickbait links, false security update alerts, and many more.
Creating a strong and stable network interface with strong security and permissions for employees to enter the system. Analyzing network-access requests by the employees.
Personal devices such as laptops and mobile phones are sometimes the primary target to enter the network. Hence, It is also important to create awareness about remote workforce security. This includes ways to keep your remote devices secured from malicious attacks.
Use of login credentials and authentication security levels. Regular insertion and updating of credentials of the revised staff members.
Restricting employees to the network and data required for the daily routine. Also, implementing limitations and continuous monitoring of the activity of the employee.

Software solutions

It is difficult to keep track and monitor all the employee’s data manually, thus all these tasks get more complex when the organization you work for has a vast number of employees. A Software defined Perimeter (SDP) is an approach to fulfil the requirement of all the preventive features, with high accuracy and low human intervention that can prove to be an optimal solution.

SDP makes it feasible for the company to conceal its network, server, routers from external bodies. The features provided by this approach include the following:

Organizing custom accessibility and limitations. This allows the organization to provide various levels of access to a different group of employees.
Multi-Factor Authentication makes the employee verify themself more than twice for entering into a system.
Use of artificial intelligence to monitor the regular activities of every employee. In case of any suspicious acts, an alert message is sent to bring the suspicious activity to the notice of the authority.

In conclusion

Insider threats in cyber security do not leave anyone or any company, be it start-ups or large-scale companies. If the vulnerability is traced in your system, the risk of getting attacked increases day by day.

Zero trust security is the new approach that works on the ideology to automatically trust both, the employees and the outsiders. Instasafe is one of the best zero trust security providers who can help you get your system and network safeguarded the most effective security measures. We solve all your cybersecurity-related issues with high precision and monitoring.

Now, your employees can rest at home and finish the work while we take care of all the necessary security parameters. So, now you and your employees can work on the development of the company without any worry for hackers or malicious insiders to damage the security.