How to Stop Inside Security Threats
May 11th, 2020 by admin
While most businesses are focused on external security threats, there are two kinds of internal threats that deserve equal consideration and mitigation. Both accidental and intentional threats come in a lot of shapes and sizes, but there are some simple ways you can protect your organization.
In a recent survey by Ponemon, it was reported that 62% of surveyed incidents were accidental threats resulting from carelessness, misunderstandings, human error, phishing attacks, and other things that are bound to happen in the course of regular business, especially with a newly remote workforce. These are threats you can mitigate and be prepared for, but they’re never going to stop because humans will inevitably make mistakes. That’s why we suggest ongoing security and awareness training for all employees. Training helps your staff spot potential malicious actors and keeps them vigilant to threats like phishing attempts. Don’t press pause on training just because everyone’s working remotely – remote work increases the likelihood that staffers will get duped by a phishing attack.
Separately, intentional threats, according to the same survey, reported that malicious insiders caused 23% of the surveyed incidents. These threats come from disgruntled employees who are bad actors or who may be seeking revenge against the company for a perceived injustice. These are threats that every company must be vigilant about and have a plan in place to recognize and neutralize immediately.
According to our cybersecurity partner ID Agent, “Insider threats must be taken seriously as part of every cybersecurity plan. No matter how much your staff is “like a family,” humans are fallible. Never discount the possibility of disagreements that lead to disgruntled employees trying to damage the company or make extra money by selling data. Arm your staff to spot and eliminate insider threats efficiently.”
Mitigate these threats with:
- Training tools that use multiple forms of information delivery which can easily be used for remote and in-house workforce training.
- Update the training materials with new threats frequently.
- Use remote access management and multifactor authentication to protect against malicious insiders. Remote access management allows IT staff to quickly negate the stolen or compromised credentials and prevent information theft that can come back to haunt you from the Dark Web.
- Use secure remote access management, enabling you to lock down systems and data anytime, anywhere, and multifactor authentication to stop bad actors from using a stolen password.
Need help creating your perfect cyber threat protection plan? We’d love to work with you to evaluate your concerns and come up with a smart, affordable strategy. Email info@icxmsp.com and use the subject line ‘Cybersecurity threats quote.’
Posted in: Security