By Christos Flessas
An insider threat encompasses people, the most trusted enterprise entities, and affects their physical, digital, and cognitive worlds. Insiders are anyone who strives to advance a company’s goals and either directly or indirectly helps it succeed. An insider is an executive but also a worker; a facility staff but also a service provider; numerous contractors, vendors, and former employees. If ignored, they may all threaten a business’s integrity, revenue, and reputation.
An organization will only succeed in sealing its perimeter from cyber criminals if the insider threat is noticed; the castle is in danger of falling from the inside. Cyber criminals and employees with a bad axe to grind can’t be trained, controlled or admonished. As so, a solid and continuous program implementing cyber security best practices, policies, and procedures is mandatory to minimize the malicious insider threat risk and finally protect your most precious assets: your insiders.
The malicious actors’ insider threat trend
Insiders can severely harm any business. The reason is that they are granted a “permanent green light” to access sensitive data and systems within a company. In contrast, any inadequate training and mental attitude towards their company, such as irritation, disappointment, and resentment, adds to the threat magnitude. That makes them a vital but fragile block for any organization. The risk of insiders compromising sensitive data following a malicious act is often underestimated.
As cyber criminals lurk for their unsuspicious targets almost everywhere, they can easily approach insiders. They can contact them directly, digitally elicit sensitive information from them, and in many cases, they can affect the perspective of their target.
To do that, apart from their new allies like distributed working models and BYOD policies, they have a toolbox fully equipped with a range of tools based on social engineering methods and AI chatbox technology, which in many cases are used together to cause costly data breaches. Marijus Briedis of NordVPN mentions: ”For cyber criminals, however, the revolutionary AI can be the missing piece of the puzzle for a number of scams. Social engineering, where a target is encouraged to click on a rogue file or download a malicious program through emails, text messaging or online chats, is time-consuming for hackers. Yet once a bot has been exploited, these tasks can be fully outsourced, setting up a production line of fraud.”
For malicious but trusted people, where access to critical data is de facto granted, things get much easier, as we have witnessed, unfortunately. Within this category, one may find workers who have a grudge for various reasons: they may feel entitled, be in financial difficulty, or have been turned over for a promotion. Malicious insiders might abuse their privileged position to steal money and intellectual property or manipulate critical data.
Measures to take
These malicious acts need to be taken into account seriously by any business and restrained. Actions must be taken to reduce the adverse insider threat risk. As cyber criminals and bad insiders will not become extinct from our lives – after all, it’s all about human nature – their attacks will perpetuate if we don’t take drastic measures today to protect our trusted cycle’s people.
An effective way to prevent insider threats is to conduct regular risk assessments. Risk assessment help identify potential vulnerabilities in the organization’s systems, processes, and people. This information can be used to develop a risk management plan that includes security measures to mitigate the identified risks.
Another security measure a business shall consider is implementing controls limiting access to sensitive information and systems. Access controls can include:
- Password policies. Use strong passwords that are difficult to guess or brute-force.
- 2FA and MFA. Multi-factor authentication, such as a fingerprint or a one-time code, provides an additional layer of security.
- Role-based access controls. Ensure that employees have access only to the information and systems needed.
Implementing a series of machine learning/artificial intelligence-assisted security analytics to monitor user activity and detect suspicious behavior, such as unauthorized access attempts or unusual data transfers, is another effective way to prevent malicious insider threats. User activity monitoring may include logging and auditing user activity, analyzing system logs, and implementing intrusion detection and prevention systems. A critical point here is that everyone involved must know they are being monitored within legal and reasonable behavior bounds and that their employer will not interfere with their digital lives.
Providing security awareness training to employees is critical in preventing insider threats. Security awareness training can educate employees on the risks of insider threats and how to identify and report suspicious behavior. Such activity may include topics like password management, phishing scams, and social engineering techniques and attacks. By providing security awareness training, businesses create a security culture and ensure employees understand their role in preventing insider threats.
Finally, hardening network perimeter security and establishing physical security in the work environment can be highly effective in keeping your business clean from bad actors and minimizing malicious insider threats.
Conclusion
Insider threats are a growing concern for organizations of all sizes and types. Malicious actors with access to sensitive information and systems can cause significant damage to the organization, including stealing intellectual property, financial fraud, and reputational damage. To prevent insider threats, organizations need to implement effective security measures, bound with a Zero Trust Approach policy, to detect, prevent and respond to malicious activities. These measures include conducting regular risk assessments, implementing access controls, monitoring user activity, and providing security awareness training to employees.
All the above backed up with the knowledge and tools of cybersecurity professionals and threat management teams, can eventually create a safety net from insider threats and develop a security culture within a business without crossing the line and becoming a “Big Brother” for their employees.
About the Author:
Christos Flessas is a Communications and Information Systems Engineer with more than 30 years of experience as an Officer of the Hellenic Air Force (HAF). He is an accredited NATO tactical evaluator in the Communication and Information Systems (CIS) area and the National Representative (NatRep) at Signal Intelligence CIS and at Navigation Warfare (NavWar) Wrking Groups. Christos holds an MSc in Guided Weapon Systems from Cranfield University, UK. He has also attended numerous online courses such as the Palo Alto Networks Academy Cybersecurity Foundation course. His experience covers a wide range of assignments including radar maintenance engineer, software developer for airborne radars, IT systems manager and Project Manager implementing major armament contracts.
Christos is intrigued by new challenges, open minded, and excited for exploring the impact of cybersecurity on industrial, critical infrastructure, telecommunications, financial, aviation, and maritime sectors.
