Financial gain is one of the most common motivations behind cyber-attacks, making the financial sector an attractive target for cyber criminals. Recently, it was reported that companies in finance lost nearly $20 billion due to cyber-attacks and breaches. Furthermore, it was reported that financial companies get attacked 2500x more than a typical business for a total of over one billion attack attempts in a single year. These attacks don’t just target financial institutions.

Investigating a once trusted employee for potential misuse, theft, or other offenses regarding company resources can be a complicated process. While we all hope to hire ethically sound employees, various factors can contribute to ending up with a bad apple in the bunch. Labeled, insider threats, these employees pose a grave risk to organizations due to the insider knowledge and often authorized access they have to critical resources.

The concept of emotional intelligence was first introduced by psychologist Dr. Daniel Goleman in 1995. Dr. Goleman found that while intelligence (IQ) is an important factor in leadership, a high level of emotional intelligence (EI) marks those who emerge as highly effective leaders. Emotional intelligence involves soft skills such as discipline, motivation and empathy.

Every visionary business wants to onboard the best of the best when it comes to talent. When hiring, companies look for hardworking, trustworthy individuals that they can rely on to propel the business forward. Similarly, people don’t typically hire people thinking they might start stealing money or misusing information and resources. Unfortunately, this happens quite regularly.

Insider Threats come in many different shapes and forms and can be a frustrating problem to diagnose. Adding to the problem is the fact that even the most reliable and seemingly harmless employees can change in an instant and pose a threat. Protecting your company against these sometimes-unpredictable actors requires an understanding of the various profiles that exist and their motivations.

The US Department of Labor states that most people work an average of eight hours a day, but the question is, how many of those hours are productive? Employee productivity has been getting a lot of attention lately, and some studies show that workers spend only three hours per day on work tasks. Even if that figure is somewhat exaggerated, the point is that your employees may be busy with unproductive activities while they are on the job.

The healthcare industry is one where the mission is very straightforward – empower people to live with the highest quality of life possible for them. This means keeping lives safe and secure, all while armies of cyber criminals are working diligently to do the opposite.

One day, a contractor working for an internet service provider decided to sabotage the company by disabling internet connectivity for all customers. Unfortunately, the employee's attack was successful, and the disruption lasted three weeks. This attack cost the company tens of thousands in remediation costs and left many customers struggling to navigate a world without the internet.

Human beings have been dubbed as one of the most significant risks when it comes to cyber security in organizations. Behind every breach is a human or entity orchestrating an attack to make it happen. Within the affected organization, there is usually a human action that leads to the success of the attack.

A few years ago, a news story about a man who was being paid six figures to watch cat videos went viral. Unfortunately, his company didn’t realize that this is what they were paying him to do all day. How did this happen? The employee, whom we’ll refer to as “John,” worked for a company in the US and was getting paid six figures as a developer.