How To Prevent Insider Threats?

Insider threat as the name suggests insider means someone in your company or organization steals the sensitive data or harms the organization. In this article, we will cover a brief explanation of insider threats and their types. Also, we will cover how to prevent insider threats.

Insider threats are the types of security risk. It happens when in a company the past employees or the current employees misuse your company’s sensitive data and those who have more knowledge about the company fundamentals. These threats damage the company’s reputation.

Below are the types of Insider threats-

• Malicious Insider:- In malicious insider, the person in the organization or company is stealing sensitive data and misusing the data to damage the company’s reputation and violates the company policies because the person in the organization already has priveledges to access all the information so they easily steal the sensitive information and misuse the data.

• Accidental Insider:- In accidental insider, as the name suggests “accidental” means mistake or we can say that the people in the organization release the company’s sensitive information by mistake. for ex- people click the malicious link and enter the company credentials and the hacker steals their sensitive information. Two persons were present in an accidental Insider threat. The first is an unwitting person that does not aware while performing malicious activity and the second is a careless person who ignores the security policy and leaks the data.

• Third-party Insider:-Third parties such as vendors, and partners who have access to the company’s data have stolen sensitive information and misused the data.

• Disgruntled Employee:- Disgruntled employees are unhappy employees or employees who leave the company and aren’t happy with the job and the work environment and have to leak the company’s sensitive information.

Below are the indicators of Insider threats-

• Suspicious login Behavior:- If someone outside your organization tries to log in again and again to the company’s account. The login is generally tried after working hours, weekends, or holidays so that they easily steal sensitive information without knowing the other person in the organization.
• Increase no. of downloads:- If you see that your company server there is a large no. of data downloads this represents insider threats operating within your network.
• Unauthorized users access Application:- Many company uses applications such as CRM, and financial management applications. When an unauthorized person tries to log in to your application to steal sensitive information, make sure to check the application regularly if any suspicious activity going on then update your password.
• Leaving the company:- If the employer leaves the company or they are unhappy employee does not like the job or toxic work environment so in that case they steal the company’s sensitive data and misuse it.
• Transfer of data- Many past employees or current employees that unhappy with their organization transfer the company data, and files outside the organization to damage the organization’s reputation.

Below are the examples of Insider threats-

• The first example of the insider threat is in the police department where employees don’t have enough training and they mistakenly moved files from cloud storage and the 8 million files deleted.
• The second example of the insider threat is phishing attacks which every organization faces from small scale to big scale. Hackers send phishing emails to the target organization if someone opens the email or clicks the malicious and puts in the company credentials in that case hackers steal the company’s sensitive data.
• The third example of insider threats is disgruntled employees. Disgruntled employees are unhappy employees that do not happy with their jobs. These employees steal the company’s sensitive data and destroy the company’s reputation.
• The fourth example of insider threat is the employee of company Taco Bell who stole the customer’s credit card information to buy products for herself.

Below are the practices for preventing insider threats-

• Always train your employees regarding insider threats, social engineering attacks, and phishing attacks. Teach your employees how to report and identify these threats. This will secure the overall organization.
• Before the employee hiring, make sure to do background checks such as to check if there are any criminal records of the employees or not. Background check reflects the overall behavior of the employee and secures the company from the wrong employee’s hiring.
• Teach employees to use strong passwords, and unique passwords in multiple accounts, and enable multi-factor authentication.
• Regularly review and update your system which helps to find the vulnerability in the system and recover the company data.
• Many employees work remotely and work in a Google sheet to track, update, and add important information or daily tasks. Make sure to give access to the sheet within the organization. for ex if someone in the organization has already accessed the Google sheet and shared the sheet outside the organization in that case if given access to the sheet someone outside the organization steals your sensitive data and misuses it to damage your organization’s reputation.
• Use a user behavior analytics tool that monitors the user behavior.
• Teach employees to report any suspicious activity going on in the organization. This will reduce insider threats and secure the company’s data.

Below are the practices for detecting insider threats-

• Identify and detect the unauthorized accounts that try to log in to organization accounts. Behavioral analysis helps to check user behavior and helps to detect any suspicious activity from unauthorized users.
• Use sentiment analysis to check user behavior and give insights.
• Auditing also helps with insider detection. Organizations ask employees to check the user’s activity and help detect threats. Auditing contains two parts Manual auditing and automated auditing. In manual auditing, we have to check and identify what activity the user performed. If we find any suspicious activity we have to report and investigate further. In automated auditing, we can use various tools and AI technologies that give the user behavior. By using AI and machine learning, we can detect insider threats more quickly.
• Develop an Insider threat program that helps to detect and respond the insider incidents that recover the organization from any damages.
• Use a zero trusted approach that doesn’t trust anyone inside or outside the network. If the employees leave the organization that case don’t give access to the data if they have not worked. And if the employees working in that case check with the security officers to monitor the employee’s login activity.

Here are the detection and prevention solutions that recover from insider threats-

• UEBA Software:- UEBA stands for user and entity behavior analytics which helps to monitor user activity. It uses machine learning to detect user behavior from time to time. If any suspicious behavior of the user is found it is notified to the IT administrator.
• Employee monitoring software:- It detects anonymous behavior. Always track your user activity and behavior via Software, especially the employee who works remotely because they are not connected to the company network in that case there is a high chance of hacking your organization’s accounts. Relevant software will help to cope with insider threats and help to secure the organization’s data.
• SIEM– SIEM stands for security information and events management that captures the user or employee activities and if anything goes wrong in the user activity it will notify the respective IT administrator.
• Pathlock:- Pathlock control is the insider threat prevention and detection solution that captures the deep user behavior and checks if any unauthorized activity going on, pathlock control detects and stops it. It secures the customer’s sensitive data and is free from insider threats.

In conclusion, a background check is an essential step for every employee before hiring. It gives the employee’s behavior and check if any criminal record of the employee in the past or not. Various tools and techniques are also helpful in detecting and recovering from insider threats.

Define outsider threats.

The threats that go outside the organization such as cyber terrorists are known as outsider threats. for ex-phishing attacks, malware attacks, etc.

Difference between the insider threats and outsider threats.

In insider threats, the threats go inside the organization while in outsider threats, the threats go outside the organization. An example of insider threats is when someone in your organization steals your sensitive data and misuses it. An example of an outsider threat such as someone outside your organization stealing your sensitive data may be a past employee.

List the steps that stop the Insider threats.

Here are the 4 steps that stop the insider threats-

• Detect
• Investigate
• Prevent
• Protect