Smart Strategies to Strengthen Your Companies Insider Threat Program

In today’s digital age companies have to do more than just about protecting themselves from outside threats. They have to guard themselves against insider threats. These threats include poor cyber hygiene, the theft of intellectual property, international damage to computer systems, or malicious actions such as swindling or fraud.

Moreover, the insider threat threshold is a lot wider than you imagine. Even with the well-intentioned team members, the misplacement of equipment, inadequate use of a password, falling prey to phishing comes are pretty common for businesses. Further, malicious attacks can come from anyone who has insider information about the company’s computer system and vulnerabilities. People who might be indulging in such capabilities can either be unhappy employees, past employees, contractors, or vendors.

It is essential for every organization to proactively put cyber hygiene into action. Even if the employees are working from home. After the pandemic, and even now in the post-pandemic world, many companies will continue with remote working schedules for the majority of their staff. This indicates the obvious lack in implementation of cyber hygiene from remote workers. It has been observed that remote workers tend to be less reluctant towards protecting company data. If this is the case with your remote staff as well then you need to make sure that cyber hygiene followed in the office should also be part of the remote working culture.

Additionally, remote working cyber hygiene should also include the usage of safe and secure internet connections. Most of the remote workers use the internet connection to their home to access company websites and more. If the internet connection is not secure that it can be the biggest threat to the company network. Therefore, company’s should make sure their employees use protected and high-speed internet services like  Hughesnet internet for work.

Other than this, following are some of the strategies that can help tech leaders to strengthen their insider threat program: 

First Design Basic Controls

Before implementing more complex controls, make sure the basics are in action for strengthening insider threat programs. The basics include separation of duties and access control. Those with a key role in the company should be able to access the sensitive intellectual information of the company. Not only should this but within the company solid governance be established to protect the documents with sensitive data. 

Run Comprehensive Background Checks

Running criminal background checks on all employees, vendors, contractors, and people on board was a hard process. However now with the advancement in technology, this process is more affordable. 

This process enables the organization to include members with clear criminal background history. Companies that run a check of criminal background for those with privileges access and high position should be made more accountable to these processes to ensure less damage to the company. 

Hire a Red Team

First, understand what truly is a threat to your company. By doing this, you can prioritize the remediations. 

Most leaders do not have the resources, budget, and time to understand the risk caused let alone come up with recovery methods. 

However, by having a third-party red team that has assess company information based on their regulatory stories and compliance. Also, make sure to continue working on the possible threat to limit damage from a larger picture. 

Develop a Standard of Normal User Behavior 

Identifying whether a legitimate account has been comprised is tough. It is extremely critical for organizations to deploy behavioral analytics and to identify the standard of normal employee behavior. 

Therefore, by developing a standard of normal user behavior it will be easy to identify if the person is behaving unusually to the pattern. 

Leverage Machine Learning

Organizations can upgrade their insider threat solution by advancing it with machine learning. Machine learning is particularly great when it comes to baselining activities of users. 

Machine learning provides information that can be used to only a significant deviation from normal user behaviors. 

This also helps the organization in creating a more proactive posture. 

Sum Up with Zero Trust

The Zero trust module can help companies minimize insider threats as much as possible.