Many business owners – and the IT professionals they rely on – focus
on protecting their companies from external threats – the lone hacker
out for a large ransom, the industry competitor pilfering secrets, or
organized cyber-criminals with sophisticated phishing schemes, etc. But
what about internal threats?
Organizations sometimes fail to consider the true risks that insiders
pose to their cybersecurity. Yet, internal risks are every bit as
dangerous and damaging as the external ones, even if there is not
malicious intent.
The 2019 IBM Cost of Data Breach survey revealed that 24 percent
of all data breaches in the past five years were the result of negligent
employees or contractors. Another report, Insider Data Breach Survey,
found that 60 percent of executives felt employees who made mistakes
while rushing to complete tasks were the primary cause of internal
breaches. Another 44 percent pointed to a lack of general awareness
as the second most common reason, and 36 percent cited inadequate
training for their organization’s security tools as a close third.
To drive home the full harm of insider threats, we’ve compiled five
actual case studies of internal actors who’ve wreaked financial
and reputational damage when they got careless, or abused their
knowledge and positions for personal gain.
Case 1: The Careless Employee – Sometimes employers don’t do enough to educate their workers about cybersecurity best practices, and sometimes employees fail to heed recommended security protocols.
Case 2: The Sneaky Former Employee – The knowledge that trusted employees gain about your business doesn’t get turned in with their resignation. Employees can become threats after they move on.
Case 3: The Compromised Third-Party Vendor – An “insider” doesn’t have to be located directly within your walls to become a threat to your network. Trusted third-party vendors may have enough access to your network and data to be unknowing conduits for external hackers and do damage to your network.
Case 4: The Deceptive Spouse – Spouses share as much information as business partners, maybe even more. When those relationships turn sour, the secrets shared in private can be used for personal gain.
Case 5: Unsupported Legacy Software and Devices – Sometimes insider threats are caused by failure to act, rather than an employee doing something bad. Out-of-date devices and software typically do not receive critical security updates and patches, rendering them open doors for hackers.
The Internal Protection You Need
As a reputable MSP, we understand cybersecurity and its significance to
today’s small businesses. Looking for internal cybersecurity threats is more
challenging than managing threats from the outside.
We offer formidable insider threat detection and issue alerting that
can accommodate any budget and networks of any size. We have
specialized security software that runs a daily non-intrusive check of each
computer on your network, and alerts us when it detects these kinds of
insider threats, and more.
Would you like to learn more about how Expert Computer Solutions can protect your business and receive a free dark web report for your company? Contact us to schedule your free business consultation.
