Cyber threats often appear as external attacks, but sometimes, they happen from within. Someone in your team might be responsible for the security breach on your network—that's the case with insider threats.
Insider threats can be very damaging, especially when you overlook them. So what exactly are insider threats? Are they always malicious? And how can you protect your network from them?
Types of Insider Threats
Insider threats are highly risky because of the trust established by most employers with their coworkers or business associates. So what sorts of threats might you face? There are two major types of insider threats: malicious and non-malicious.
What Are Malicious Insider Threats?
A malicious insider threat, also known as a "Turncloak", is deliberately and intentionally committed by an insider actor who is either a former or current employee or business associate to affect the company negatively.
The perpetrators of malicious insider threats do this by using allocated privileges to explore and leak confidential information about the organization.
As a business owner, some indicators can help you detect malicious insider threats at an early stage. These include a history of misused data or information in a previous workplace, personality conflicts with coworkers, forgery of hiring information, and official records of past detainment for hacking or security defilement.
What Are Non-Malicious Insider Threats?
The non-malicious insider threat is the complete opposite of the malicious threat. In this case, the insider threat actor harbors no bad intentions toward the company. The actor falls prey to a cyberattacker's antics by taking the wrong action or leaving a vulnerability exposed or unreported (perhaps without realizing it's a vulnerability).
10 Ways to Protect Against Insider Threats
Protecting your network against insider threats is critical, especially because resolving an insider threat is costlier. Besides the financial implications, it could ruin your reputation.
Here are the best ways to secure your network from malicious and non-malicious internal attacks.
1. Disable Former Employees' Accounts
One of the easiest ways an ex-employee can gain access to a company’s network is through their accounts with the company. As an employer, it’s easier to forget to disable these accounts when an employee is laid off or has finished their contract with your establishment.
As soon as an employee is no longer a member of your staff, the first action you should take is to shut down and disable every login or access they have with your company. You don’t have to be sentimental about it or prolong it. The more you wait, the more time they have to exploit what access they have.
2. Restrict Certain Access to Select Employees
Critical internal systems to your network shouldn’t be available to all employees. It’s crucial to limit this access to certain employees who can handle them. This action is necessary to eliminate the threat to your network.
While you grant access to these certain internal users, it’s also important to pay attention to their activities.
3. Limit Resources to Internal Users
According to the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP), a.k.a. the principle of the least authority or the principle of minimal privilege, users’ accounts should have only the authorization required to do their job without extra privileges.
Grant users the minimum resources they need for their work and nothing extra. The access should enable them to execute their tasks and that's it, to minimize risks of them exploring areas they shouldn't be in.
4. Be Up-to-Date on Internal Security News
Do not neglect internal security updates while paying attention to only external threats. Keeping up to date with this information will help identify any new methods an internal threat actor may use to attack your network.
And once an exploit is discovered, take the necessary steps to fix the problem.
5. Educate Your Employees
Educating your employees on cybersecurity is essential to prevent non-malicious and malicious insider threats.
Periodic or annual security training should include courses on social engineering, malware, phishing, password security, portable device use, data destruction, physical access, data breaches, data encryption, and how they should respond if a security attack appears to take place.
6. Restrict Data Transfer and Copying
Your data is safest in your system. When people begin to move sensitive data around, there is a tendency for it to get into the wrong hands.
You might need to restrict your users from transferring data or files to external sources such as external email addresses, USBs, or authorized locations. With this, it will be more difficult for disengaged employees to steal data or share confidential information accidentally.
7. Configure Internal Session Timeouts
Use session timeouts to protect your network from internal threats. This action will assist users in maintaining security by preventing Windows and other sessions from remaining active while away from the computer.
If users remain logged into a local network for a longer duration, they may unknowingly or deliberately grant computer access to someone posing as the user.
8. Divide Your Network Into Segments
The act of network segmentation involves constructing a set of smaller networks within an organization instead of having a single large network. With this, traffic movement between these networks can be securely monitored and measured, and you can differentiate departments’ activities from one another entirely.
For example, the accounting and the advertising department may have no access to each other’s files or network applications.
9. Screen New Workers
The hiring stage of new staff in your establishment is crucial and shouldn’t be overlooked in preventing insider threats.
An applicant’s past job records can show a lot of information. Conduct thorough background checks by speaking with former employers, checking on all references, and examining them for any behavioral red flags.
10. Outsource Insider Threat Security Measures to Experts
Attempting to manage the overall security sector of your company by yourself can be exhausting and confusing, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the whole process.
While you might have implemented simple security measures, you can also allocate or hire experts from IT security companies to handle it. For instance, cybersecurity experts can perform penetration testing to check for loopholes that insider threats thrive on.
Manage Insider Threats With Effective Cybersecurity
It’s necessary to understand that malicious insiders are more difficult to discern than non-malicious threats because the initiators use under-the-radar tactics to cause harm. They want to stay hidden, essentially.
While you may not be able to stop insider threats from happening, you can mitigate them by strengthening your cybersecurity. In the event of such threats, your defenses will be so strong that their impact will be insignificant.