Despite the ongoing rise in social engineering attacks, the idea that cybersecurity is only about technology manifests within most of our minds. Organizations often neglect human behavior's impact on their cybersecurity postures. Instead, they spend lavishly on endpoint security tools, threat hunting programs, and building incident response plans. Admittedly, these security measures are a crucial part of mitigating attacks.
Apart from external attackers, organizations need to consider another type of threat when planning their cybersecurity strategy: insider threats. There are different types of insiders. On the one hand, there are people who have secret knowledge and unintentionally create risk openings within an organization; and on the other, there are others who intend to cause harm, motivated by profit, extortion, or personal grievance. This means insiders can be classified as follows.
People have become the primary attack vector for cyber attackers around the world. As the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report 2022 indicates, it is humans rather than technology that now represent the greatest risk to organizations. According to the SANS 2022 Security Awareness Report, the top three security risks that security professionals are concerned about are phishing, business email compromise (BEC) and ransomware, all closely related to human behavior.
Perhaps someone doesn’t answer a Slack message as quickly as they should, or they have long hours blocked on their calendar. Maybe someone doesn’t seem motivated during team meetings or they are slow to complete work. While research has shown that overall, productivity has actually increased as a result of the work-from-home movement, managers know all too well what it’s like to be suspicious that someone is taking advantage of their new work arrangement.
In September 2021, 45% of full-time employees were still working remotely, and the trend is hard to reverse. People like the freedom of working from home. Without a commute, they save time. Without a boss looming in the background, they can multi-task at home. And, without an office full of colleagues, they don’t have to worry about dressing up or having water cooler chit-chat. While employees see these changes as positives, businesses see remote workers as a bit of a risk.
We’d like to think of our coworkers as trusted team members, collaborating on a shared mission to make positive contributions to the well being of the company. For the most part, this is true, but we must also recognize that our coworkers are individuals who may conduct themselves in ways that are detrimental to the company.
Insider threat incidents have increased by 44% over the past two years, and the cost of an incident now tops $15.3 million, according to the 2022 Cost of Insider Threats report from Ponemon. To defend against this pressing security — and business — risk, organizations need a comprehensive insider threat detection strategy. This article provides extensive guidance to help you get started building an effective program.
Gone are the days where bosses could simply walk by an employee’s desk and peek at their computer screen to see if they were on task. At the end of last year, 45% of full-time employees worked from home at least part of the time, and many want to keep it that way. Enter employee monitoring, not-so-affectionally known as “bossware.” It’s software that companies install to better understand what it is their employees are doing all day.
