Identifying Malicious Insider using Proactive Employee Monitoring

Insider threat has been one of the most important issues in security since times bygone. As written by ancient Roman satirist Juvenal “Who will guard the guards themselves?”, security concerns due to insiders are no different in ‘Digital Era’. Within an organization, insider threats can come from various ways. It can come from an employee who has access to all the confidential data of an organization. While in another case, insider threat can come from an accidental or negligent employee. An insider might act alone or they might be working with a third-party for personal gains. This can induce a lot of damage to the organization leading to loss of revenue and intellectual property damage.

Insider threat reports of 2017 say that 53 percent of companies estimate costs of $100,000 and more due to data breaches caused via internal factors. While 12 percent estimate a cost of more than $1 million. It also highlights, 74 percent of organizations feel vulnerable to insider threats. Whereas 7 percent organizations report of extreme vulnerabilities.????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

What Makes Insiders Conduct Such Crimes?

There are several reasons:

1.??? ACTING ON OPPORTUNITY - There might be an employee who has full access to your critical data. They might take this as an opportunity and share your data with your competitors. This can induce a lot of damage to your company’s growth and reputation.

2.??? MAKE A STATEMENT - Sometimes, an employee wants to make a political or social statement. We can take the example of Edward Snowden, a former employee of NSA. He leaked classified information from NSA in 2013 to protest against government surveillance.

3.??? ?EMPLOYEES ON NOTICE PERIOD - There might be authorized employees serving their notice period. They might plan to take samples of their work. This might include your confidential data which could hamper your organization’s growth.

4.??? ACTING OUT OF REVENGE - A disgruntled employee might share your sensitive data to take revenge. S/he may plan to destroy the company’s bottom line by sharing your data with media.

5.??? FOR FUTURE BENEFITS - There might be employees who want to start their own business later. They may steal company data to use for their future venture.

In majority of such cases, these kinds of insider attacks go unnoticed, as they come from an authorized employee. These insiders will have full access to all the confidential details. Either the attack is done intentionally or accidentally, it is not easily detected. Therefore, organizations should have better security solutions to detect and monitor such insiders. The detection and analysis of insider threats include both technical and non-technical approaches.

Technical Approach:

Proactive Employee Monitoring

Organizations across the globe are taking the aid of various employee monitoring security solutions. This helps them to keep a track of their employee’s internet activities and analyze their behavioral patterns. As a result, it reduces the risk of security breaches and prevents data leak. Moreover, you can track the productivity of your employee by monitoring their computer. This will help you to identify if there is any potential threat from an employee. inDefend Business is one such proactive employee monitoring solution with most benefits.

InDefend Proactive Monitoring Features:

Analysis of user behavior

• Screenshot monitoring
• Shadow logging for emails, email attachments, file uploads & FTP file transfer
• Alerts for sensitive keywords, phrases and file activity
• Real-time incident alerts
• Browser behavior analysis
• Device activity monitoring and reporting

inDefend tracks the endpoints and generates real-time alerts whenever an incident takes place. The report and analytics section provides a complete report of all the activities performed by the employee. It also provides you with an insight of any possible attempt made by the employee to access blocked sites. This helps the organizations to understand the user behavior with accurate analytics. As a result, you can limit the employee’s access to confidential data. inDefend allows you to detect malicious activities and also safeguards your confidential data.

?Non-Technical Approach: Human Oriented

Organizations should implement some human oriented approaches as well. Only relying on the technical ones might be dangerous for them. Most of the intentional or unintentional threats come from humans.

• Apply proper surveillance for suspected employees or employees serving their notice period.
• Employee awareness training about security and confidentiality policies to avoid unintentional leaks.
• Legally binding employees against such misconducts.
• Provide employees a trusted environment to voice out their issues.
• Proper employee motivation.

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In conclusion, we can say that people working for or within the organization are aware of the internal mechanisms of the organization. As a result, they can use this knowledge to circumvent defenses. It is highly important for the organizations to install better security solutions. It is very clear that a threat can come from inside as well as outside the organization. Solutions like inDefend can provide you better employee monitoring and data leak prevention systems. So try an insider threat management tool today and start securing your organization better.

?InDefend: Unified User Behaviour Analytics & Insider Threat Management Solution

inDefend is a one-stop solution to help protect your data from all kinds of insider threats within your organization. It allows you to monitor your employees’ behavioral patterns and also pinpoint potential avenues for data exfiltration. This solution is built to achieve complete transparency over all the digital assets residing within your organization. With our unified solution, you can easily tackle various kinds of security issues pertaining to data exfiltration. It offers a proactive approach to the organization as follows.

Insider Threat Management - Get a complete user behavior analysis to protect your sensitive data from being compromised by employees by monitoring their activities and communication habits.

Employee Monitoring - Monitor and improve your employees’ productivity by keeping a track of their work activities during work hours.

Real Time Alerts - Get real-time incident alerts for any kind of data exfiltration activity that takes place within the organization.

Accurate Analytics - Get detailed cyber intelligence reports which highlight the key sensitive data leakage scenarios with granular visibility into team dynamics and organizational ecosystem.

Superior Control - Lock down or block specific channels or devices in case any sensitive data exfiltration is detected.

Enforced Encryption - Secure multiple endpoints with enforced encryption to restrict the use of sensitive information or files.

?Implementing a better security system is the need of all organizations at this hour. Our unified solution inDefend can secure your organization from insider threats to a great extent. inDefend is designed to prevent data leakage via various communication channels and proactively keep you informed of any kind of sensitive data exfiltration attempts even on the go. So start securing your organization against insider threats with inDefend.

Contact us for more information

WhatsApp at - +91 95999 36473

Email - marketing@dataresolve.com

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