There is plenty to worry about with professional cyber criminals and their varied ways of gaining access to your systems and data, but what about insider threats? It could be a malicious character working on the inside, but typically it’s an employee who simply makes an error and inadvertently creates a bad situation.

Unintentional employee damage is common. A 2020 study by Ponemon found that only 13% of insider threats are malicious. In many cases, employees fall prey to phishing emails or mistakenly click on a bad link. They may engage in other risky behaviors, such as leaving devices unattended or using them to access an unsecured network.  

Motivations

A small percentage of threats are related to ideological motivations. Some insiders have a grudge against the company (roughly 10%) that prompts them to act maliciously, but the vast majority of breaches are motivated by money – they’re looking for a big payday.

Channels

There are many different manifestations of insider threats, including sabotage, espionage, violence, and theft, such as physically taking property or stealing intellectual property. However, one of the most common is cyber-related.

Digital threats, as mentioned earlier, are most often prompted by an unintentional act by an unsuspecting insider. They expose the organization’s IT infrastructure to a hacker. “Malvertising” to rogue software to phishing scams are the usual suspects.

Threat Detection

While a good disaster recovery and business continuity plan should always be part of the overall strategy, being proactive is part of safeguarding your organization. That’s why monitoring your network with threat detection solutions has become a means of protecting against insider threats, as well as outsider threats.

Monitoring technology can block unauthorized access, deterring attacks from penetrating your system. Given that so many insider threats are generated unintentionally, make sure all of your employees are using multi-factor authentication. This simple fix can prevent the bulk of attacks but is too often neglected.

Third-Party Assistance

It can be time-consuming to stay educated on the latest cyber security threats. It’s also seemingly impossible to keep up with the technology being developed for threat detection. Rather than taxing your IT department with keeping up-to-date on cyber security trends, try working with a third-party professional who specializes in matching companies with the right technology.

Contact us at eXemplify and learn more about our approach to assisting clients with cyber security solutions. With our combined years of experience, we have an astounding supplier portfolio that provides our clients and us with all the support required.