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.

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).

While organizations are spending a good deal of money protecting their data against unauthorized access from the outside, malicious insiders may pose no less harm. According to the 2021 Data Breach Investigation Report [PDF] by Verizon, 36% of all data breaches experienced by large organizations in 2020 were caused by internal actors. For small and midsize businesses, it was 44%.

A low level of insider threat awareness among employees can cause all sorts of cybersecurity issues: user negligence and risky behavior resulting in cybersecurity incidents, non-compliance with critical regulations and industry standards, etc. Installing new software and establishing stricter rules can’t always protect an organization from these threats. Raising the cybersecurity awareness level, on the other hand, can.

In 2020, remote work became not just a trend but a must for many companies. Yet ensuring secure telecommuting turned out to be a challenge for cybersecurity teams: Remote employees tend to use insecure tools, work in unprotected environments, and mismanage sensitive data. All of this increases the risk of insider threats. In this article, we take a close look at the challenges remote employees bring and the risks they can pose to your organization.

In striving to make sure in-office and remote employees’ work is secure, organizations often rely on technology-centric approaches. Although user monitoring tools and other cybersecurity solutions do their jobs, they still can’t affect employee behavior and fully secure remote work. To engage remote employees into cybersecurity, organizations are now shifting to a human-centric approach.

Lawyers constantly handle sensitive data that attracts hackers and malicious insiders. Every security breach leads to reputational losses, remediation costs, and penalties. That’s why cybersecurity at law firms is regulated by strict IT laws and requirements. Complying with all necessary requirements and implementing protection measures that fit your organization is challenging.

Security incidents are often hard to detect and tend to go unnoticed for far too long. They’re also time-consuming to investigate, since gathering evidence and correlating facts may take months or even years. For instance, the graphic design website Canva became aware of the theft of user credentials for almost a million accounts only seven months after the actual incident. That’s why it’s better to put your effort into preventing incidents rather than handling their consequences.

IT compliance requirements are designed to help companies enhance their cybersecurity and integrate top-level protection into their workflows. But passing an IT security audit can be challenging. Complex requirements, constant changes in standards and laws, and audit processes, and a high number of required security procedures are the key challenges of maintaining compliance. The way out is with careful preparation and smart planning.

Education is a strictly regulated industry in which robust cybersecurity protection is a must. Data breaches can cost a fortune for schools and universities, since the loss of students’ personal information and other critical data brings reputational damage alongside fines for regulatory non-compliance. In the US in 2019 there were 348 publicly disclosed K-12 school-related cybersecurity incidents — triple the number in 2018.