What can you do about it? Here are 10 tips to help you develop and implement an internal threat mitigation strategy. Some can be complex and costly in the long run, but others simply involve reviewing your processes and policies and applying best practices. The main objective is to focus your information security radar indoors. Although geopolitical tensions and foreign teams related to ransomware have been making the headlines, security teams know that a malicious intruder thanks to their extensive knowledge of where all the valuable data is kept, and many of their intruders already have the keys to steal or jeopardize that data.
When preparing your strategy to combat internal threats, it's critical to recognize the most common types of internal attacks. LightEdge helps companies identify and fix security issues, including internal threats from authorized users. Let's review the basics of internal cybersecurity threats and then examine three internal threat solutions you can implement to protect your organization immediately. While insiders in the public sector continue to be a concern, the private sector faces a number of challenges stemming from internal threats.
Research recently published by Exabeam analyzes the hidden world of cryptocurrency mining by insiders and malicious people. Protecting their businesses against internal threats remains a major concern for organizations as part of their overall cybersecurity strategy. Whether it's a malicious insider who has accepted money in exchange for trade secrets, a negligent user who sends a bank transfer to a fraudulent bank account after receiving a forged email from an “executive”, or a person with compromised privileged information whose credentials are stolen and used by attackers to extract and sell personally identifiable information (PII) from their patients. While internal threats may not be malicious, an internal attack, in a nutshell, is an attack executed on a computer system by an intern with malicious intent who has authorized access to the system.
Next, 15 members of the Forbes Business Development Council discuss what leaders can do to stay strong and trustworthy and attract stronger business alliances. People with a bad reputation, such as Edward Snowden, have highlighted the potential harm that a person with malicious insider information can cause not only to an individual agency like the CIA, but also on a larger scale, the embarrassment and operational harm that it can cause to the United States government. Internal threats are not limited to the extraction or theft of information, but any action taken by a person “with privileged information” that could negatively affect an organization falls into the category of internal threats. These people who receive internal threats will take active steps to avoid being detected by security measures related to internal threats.
According to the survey, of all security-related incidents, 54 percent were caused by employees, and of these incidents, 28 percent of internal security incidents were unintentional or accidental, 18 percent were intentional, and 8 percent were due to the theft of internal credentials. The CISA, the National Working Group on Internal Threats, and other agencies offer many excellent resources on how to implement an effective internal threat prevention program.
