Employee Monitoring: A Balanced Approach
Monitoring employees for insider threats is a complex topic that involves balancing security concerns with individual privacy and ethical considerations. While it's important to protect a company's sensitive information and assets, it's equally important to respect the privacy and rights of employees.
It is no surprise that companies are exploring which technologies, processes, and programs they can adopt to proactively mitigate risk with a balanced approach.
Customer Stories: Discovering Unknown Issues
New insider risk use cases are constantly emerging, highlighting the gaps in companies' cybersecurity postures when they fail to fully consider the endpoint and endpoint user's actions. Imagine your organization as a dark room. Each security tool used shines a flashlight into a different area - IAM, anti-virus, web filtering, email security, etc. This may illuminate more areas, but without visibility into the end user's actual endpoint activity, there will always be a dark corner hindering security.
Below are two excellent examples of cases where available cybersecurity and network-based security tools failed in exposing critical risks taking place in that dark corner of the room.
Getting Started: Insider Risk Management
Sometimes, the lack of knowledge can be the most serious security risk your organization faces. It is no longer a hidden fact, that insider misuse, either intentional of unintentional, constitutes grave consequence to organizations. Yet, insider threats are more difficult to identify and prevent than external attacks. They are often below the radar of conventional cybersecurity solutions such as firewalls, intrusion detection systems and anti-malware software. Because the insider already has valid authorization to data and systems, it’s difficult to distinguish between normal and harmful activity. For example, if an attacker logs in via an authorized user ID, password, IP address and device, they are unlikely to trigger any security alarms.
No matter the intent, the end result is compromised confidentiality, availability, and/or integrity of enterprise systems and data; and the value of sensitive data and information to organizations is higher than ever.
The Danger of Privileged Access and Users
Privileged accounts and privileged access are necessary to every business today. This role-based security model provides users with different levels of access that ensure an IT team can administer and manage the organization’s systems, infrastructure, and software, while also enabling employees to access the applications and data that allows them to perform business tasks.
While important to every organization, privileged accounts are also the most likely to be a threat and targeted by cyber criminals. This is because they allow the attackers to easily move around the network, accessing critical systems and sensitive data while remaining undetected and cleverly hiding their tracks.
Three Reasons Your DLP Strategy Needs to Evolve
For anyone who has worked in cybersecurity, the term “DLP” is a very familiar one. DLP, data loss prevention (or protection), became a must-have security tool decades ago and, since that time, has evolved into a blanket term covering all types of software. Everything from Identity Access Management (IAM) to time-tracking, EDR to CRM adds DLP to their list of features and benefits. It’s no surprise that many may also assume that the all-purpose “DLP software” can address their insider risk concerns. However, there are a number of weaknesses to bear in mind when considering DLP as a possible solution for insider risk and improving your overall security stance.
The Threat Posed by the ex-Insider
Although the rate of employee layoffs has slowed since this time last year, the end is not yet in sight. With the ongoing ripple effect of 2020, many organizations are still grappling with the issue of having a significantly higher number of “ex-employees” than ever before. Still more are seeing this change coming in the...
innerActiv and Mandiant Insider Threat Services
68 was a big number in 2020 according to the 2020 Insider Threat Report: 68% of organizations report feeling moderately or extremely vulnerable to insider threat and 68% of organizations confirm that insider threats are becoming more frequent. However, just because the problem is recognized, does not make the solution simple. Many organizations struggle to...
US Navy Couple Charged in Identity Theft – The First Link in the Chain
As Identity Theft Awareness Week continues, we need to consider the source and root of identity theft incidents. Those who perpetrate identity theft schemes are often second (or third)-hand users of the identity data. The chain begins with either the organization that leaks the data or the criminal that illegally removes the data from its...
2021 is Here – Do You Need Help With Your Insider Threat Program?
As we quickly move toward the 4th week of 2021, it may become obvious which resolutions are actually going to see the light of day. While many organizations have made plans for formalizing (or maybe just thinking about) their insider threat program in 2021, most have difficulties deciding where to start. Many more have difficulty...
There’s No Excuse to “Not Know”
“Tesla does not know whether the defendant took additional files, whether he copied files from the Dropbox account to other locations in the days before he was caught, or whether he sent any of the files to other persons or entities,” the company says. Only 3 days after he started at the company, Alex Khatilov...
Announcing Mandiant Insider Threat Security Services
We’re proud to announce that innerActiv has partnered with FireEye and Mandiant to become a part of Mandiant’s Insider Threat Security Services! These services will provide industry-leading insider risk assessment services to identify active risks and threats, security gaps, and vulnerabilities in your environment, followed by tailored recommendations and action items to address both your...
APT, Insider Threat, and UEBA – Where’s the Overlap?
For those who work in security, it may seem that threats to your data, endpoints, and infrastructure can come from every angle. Unfortunately, many of these threats either originate from or implant themselves within the walls of the organization itself. The term “insider threat” and “UEBA” have evolved to describe this laundry list of potential...
Is My Employer “Spying” on Me?
Never in our years of business have we had an organization come to us and say, “I want to be able to spy on my employees.” Why? Because employers and IT teams are concerned about the well-being of the organization itself, not the personal lives of its users. As a matter of fact, we’ve found...
Controlling Cyber Threat Risks in the Days of COVID-19
Unprecedented …. Uncertain ….. Indeterminate Although these phrases seem over-used by news outlets these days, they are all, unfortunately true. We are living and working with many unknowns. The one “known” that has followed us is that of cyber threat. During the past month, cyber-attacks of all varieties have only increased as they prey on…
When Data and Employees Go Home
So, your laptops are dispersed, remote access is up and running, phone lines redirected… time to see how this “work from home thing” goes! These are all important steps, but how will you know that your information is safe when users are literally walking out the door with it? Are you even positive what data...