Cybersecurity infrastructure is vital for your business continuity. We have talked in previous blog articles about some of the best ways to keep your business safe from outside attacks. It is, however, important to remember that not all threats or attacks come from the outside.
What are Insider Threats
Insider threats come from within the organisation. This can include current and former employees, contractors or partners. The cost of an insider breach can be almost double that of an outsider, so it is really important to understand how to prevent them. Insiders can cause a lot more damage than outside cyber criminals as they have direct access to sensitive company information and data.
The following scenario is typical of insider breaches. Often, an employee will be contacted by a cybercriminal and offered significant amounts of money in exchange for information such as passwords. Sometimes an employee will agree to this because they are unhappy with their employment, other times they are simply lured by the prospect of money. Whatever the motivation, insider breaches are very serious and can have devastating consequences, both for the individual and the company.
Insider breaches can be:
- Intentional – a malicious insider will aim to bring harm to the company for personal gain. This is often because of a personal grievance, such as being refused promotion or pay rise and management issues.
- Unintentional – this includes both negligent and accidental breaches. An example of negligence would be not following a password policy or failing to install security patches. Accidental breaches could include accidentally sending a confidential email to the wrong person or opening a phishing email. Accidents can be minimised with a proper cybersecurity training programme, but human error is always a risk.
- Collusive – this is where multiple insiders work together to collaborate with an external threat. This could be throughout different departments as they will have access to different areas of the business.
- Third-party – parties who are not directly connected to the company but still have some sort of access, such as contractors or vendors.
How to Avoid Insider Threats
- Whilst you should not create an atmosphere of distrust in your company, it is important to be vigilant for threats. Think about whether any employees have a reason to feel animosity or have any resentment towards the company.
- Provide regular security awareness training for all staff. Keeping your employees educated and informed about cybersecurity is the best way to help them avoid making errors. SAT is about teaching employees to change their behaviour, create best practices and increase awareness of cybersecurity. It empowers your employees with the knowledge and ability to use technology safely.
- Manage and limit privileges. Your business should have a strong acceptable use policy. You can set up permissions that limit what websites employees can access from company issued devices. You can also detail what can and cannot be accessed from personal devices. Limiting administrative capabilities is also a good idea; not every employee needs to have access to all the information and data your business stores. The fewer people who have access to sensitive information, the smaller the risk of a data breach.
- Penetration testing. By conducting a network penetration test, we will simulate a real-world cyber-attack on your business. We will try and unlock vulnerabilities in your networks, applications, devices and people with a view to learning where your systems and training needs to improve.
- Implement 24/7 network and endpoint monitoring to detect anomalous behaviour. Our 24x7x365 network monitoring service will constantly scan your IT Infrastructure and will alert us to any issues and allow us to respond before they become business affecting, helping keep your systems running and your business stakeholders happy.
If you’re looking for a trusted IT partner to help you and your team build strong defences against cybercriminals, reach out to us today on +44 203 034 2244 or +1 323 984 8908. Alternately, you can contact us online. We will be happy to help you overcome your IT challenges.
Our friendly team will help guide you through your options and will help ensure that you get the right IT Outsourcing contract for your organisational needs. We have engineering bases in the United Kingdom, Europe and Southern California and our group of highly experienced engineers are available 24/7 to assist and ensure that your business’ IT infrastructure is running seamlessly.
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