Using unapproved tools, software, and devices is risky. You never know what vulnerabilities so-called shadow IT may have. The pandemic that began in 2020 put a new spin on the shadow IT problem. The sudden need to handle all processes remotely was a true challenge, since the majority of corporate networks were not configured to be safely accessed by employees from home.

Often, the most critical threats come from within an organization itself. This is true for all sectors, but it is especially true for industrial control systems (ICS). Technicians in these environments already have access to plant controls and may have the deep knowledge of industrial processes needed to achieve specific goals. The damage caused by an insider may range from mild disruption to major disaster depending on what is attacked.

Last year’s rapid and sometimes erratic transition to remote work left many businesses looking for new ways to understand employee behavior when working from home. According to a survey of 2,000 employers offering remote or hybrid work, 78 percent deployed employee monitoring software to track worker behavior in the past six months. As businesses emerge from the recent pandemic, it’s clear that some things will not return to business as usual.

For any organization, insider attacks are like a severe illness: prevention is better than the cure. Like illnesses, insiders mask their malicious actions and can harm your organization for a long time before you detect them. This harm can be in the form of a loss of data, customers, money, etc.   Planning a risk mitigation process helps to stop insider attacks at the early stages or reduce their potential damage.

As businesses emerge from a pandemic year, cybersecurity concerns are necessarily top of mind . Companies face expansive cybersecurity threats on many fronts, prompting 75 percent of business leaders to view cybersecurity as integral to their organization’s COVID-19 recovery. They undoubtedly face an uphill battle. Surging ransomware attacks and increasingly deceptive phishing scams are attracting national attention, while more than 500,000 cybersecurity jobs remain unfilled in the US alone.

Securing an organization’s sensitive data is hard, especially when the danger comes from within. A careless coworker may insecurely share credentials, an intruder may compromise an account, or a malicious insider may misuse their access rights. According to the 2020 Cost of Insider Threats Report [PDF] by IBM, 60% of organizations experienced more than 20 insider-related incidents in 2019. One promising solution to prevent insider threats is user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA).

The costs and consequences of a data breach or cybersecurity incident have never been more severe. According to the FBI’s recently released Internet Crime Report 2020, cybercrime resulted in $4 billion in losses last year, a low estimate that still encapsulates the incredible value lost to threats actors. For small businesses, the costs can be catastrophic. As Vox reports, 60% of small businesses will close after a data breach, underscoring the high-stakes bottom-line nature of cybersecurity.