Insider Risk Management in 2024: A Comprehensive Guide

Insider risk management targets threats from the very heart of an organization—its people. Whether intentional or accidental, actions by insiders like employees, contractors, or partners can lead to severe financial and reputational damage.

And as high-profile incidents of corporate sabotage and intellectual property theft by insiders continue to make headlines, businesses can no longer afford to be complacent.

In this article, we’ll go over everything you need to know about insider risks – from the different types of risks to actionable strategies you can use to prevent them.

What are Insider Risks?

Insider risks are the potential threats to an organization’s security, data, or resources from individuals within the organization. These individuals could be employees, contractors, business partners, or anyone authorized to access the company’s critical systems and information.

Why Is It Important to Manage Insider Risks?

There are several reasons why managing insider risks is crucial for organizations. Here are some key points:

• Reduced risk of data breaches: Properly managing insider risks significantly decreases the likelihood of data breaches. Insiders are often the weakest link in the security chain, whether malicious or negligent. You can reduce their exposure risk by monitoring and controlling their access to sensitive data.

• Enhanced data security: Implementing measures to manage insider risks strengthens your overall data security posture. This usually includes strict access controls, sensitive data encryption, employee awareness training, and secure data handling practices.
• Improved regulatory compliance: Many industries have particular regulations and standards regarding data protection and information security. Failure to address insider risks can lead to non-compliance, resulting in hefty fines, legal penalties, and potential loss of business.
• Preserved reputation and trust: Data breaches caused by insiders can severely damage an organization’s reputation and damage your trust with customers, partners, and stakeholders.
• Early detection and response: Managing insider risks also involves continuous monitoring and analysis of user behaviors and access patterns, which can help in the early detection of suspicious activities. This allows organizations to respond quickly to potential threats before they result in significant data loss.

What’s the Difference Between Insider Risks vs. Insider Threats?

While “insider risks” and “insider threats” are closely related, they refer to slightly different concepts. The critical difference between insider risks and insider threats lies in intent.

• Insider risk: Insider risk involves scenarios where an employee may unintentionally compromise security, e.g., by mishandling data, using weak passwords, or losing devices with sensitive information. While not malicious in intent, these actions can still lead to serious security breaches if not properly managed.
• Insider threat: An insider threat occurs when someone within the organization deliberately attempts to steal, sabotage, or exploit its resources. This might include an employee sharing confidential data, installing malware, or corrupting systems for financial gain, revenge, espionage, or even ideology.

Here’s an analogy to illustrate the difference:

Imagine a filing cabinet with confidential documents. An insider risk would be accidentally leaving a drawer open, while an insider threat would be someone intentionally stealing documents from the cabinet.

It’s important to note that all insider threats start as insider risks. For instance, an employee disgruntled about a recent performance review might download sensitive data (insider risk) to sell later (insider threat). Organizations can prevent them from escalating into full-blown threats by effectively managing insider risks.

Understanding the Types of Insider Risks Found in the Modern Workplace

Now, let’s take a detailed look at the types of insider risks found in modern organizations:

• Negligent insiders: These internal actors pose risks due to carelessness or a lack of awareness about security risk protocols. Common issues include failing to secure laptops, using weak passwords, or sending sensitive information to the wrong recipient.
• Malicious insiders: These actors intentionally harm the organization through data theft, malware installation, or sabotage. Their motivations can vary from financial gain to personal vendettas, and their legitimate access to the company’s systems makes them especially dangerous.
• Compromised insiders: In these cases, an insider isn’t directly responsible for the data breach. External actors have stolen or hijacked their accounts through malware infections or phishing attacks.
• Disgruntled employees: These employees may become insider threats due to dissatisfaction or grudges against the organization. If they feel undervalued or unfairly treated, they might seek revenge by leaking sensitive data, sabotaging systems, or engaging in other malicious activities.
• Privileged users: These are the individuals with the highest access privileges, such as IT administrators or executives. Due to their deep access to critical systems, they pose a heightened risk if they become negligent, compromised, or malicious.

The prevalence of remote worker arrangements adds another layer of complexity to insider risk management. Strong security measures are even more crucial nowadays, as employees access data and systems outside the office network.

The Consequences of Poorly Managed Insider Risks

Poorly managed insider risks can severely impact organizations, leading to a domino effect of negative consequences.

Here are some of the most common consequences:

Financial Losses

Insider threats can lead to significant financial losses for an organization – directly through theft or indirectly through the cost of resolving the data breach. Usually, the costs include theft of intellectual property, system downtime, regulatory fines, legal fees, lawsuits from affected parties, and remediation expenses.

Business Disruption

Insider data breaches can also cause operational disruptions, impacting productivity, service delivery, and overall business continuity. This can result in lost revenue, missed opportunities, and damage to the organization’s ability to function effectively.

Regulatory Non-Compliance

Many industries are governed by strict regulations that require companies to protect sensitive information and keep specific security practices. Insider breaches can result in security violations of these regulations, leading to penalties, fines, and mandatory corrective actions that can be costly and damage the organization’s relationship with regulators.

Employee Morale

Insider incidents can create an atmosphere of distrust among employees, especially if insider user actions lead to increased surveillance and stricter controls. Employees may feel their privacy is being invaded or their actions are constantly scrutinized, leading to decreased morale, job dissatisfaction, and potential turnover of valuable talent.

Loss of Competitive Advantage

If an insider exposes trade secrets, strategic plans, or other intellectual property, it can significantly lose a competitive advantage. Competitors may gain insights into your specific business strategies, allowing them to capture market share or undermine the organization’s position in the industry.

Damage to Partner and Customer Relationships

Data breaches and security incidents caused by insiders can severely damage the organization’s reputation and destroy relationships with partners, customers, and stakeholders. This can lead to lost business opportunities, strained relationships, and long-term reputational harm.

Increased Insurance Costs

Organizations with a history of insider-related incidents or poor security practices may face higher insurance premiums or difficulty obtaining cybersecurity insurance coverage, as insurers perceive them as higher-risk entities.

Common Factors Contributing to Insider Risks 

OK – so we’ve covered the most common types of insider threats and risks and the consequences of not managing them properly. But what about the specific factors that contribute to these insider risks?

Below, we’ll check out some of the most common ones:

Lack of Visibility into User Activity

When organizations can’t correctly monitor user activity, they struggle to monitor what users access and modify within their network. This lack of visibility makes it hard to detect suspicious or unauthorized actions that could be signs of insider threats.

Extensive Access Privileges

Giving employees or contractors access to more data than they need for their jobs increases insider risk. When people can access sensitive information beyond their role, it increases the chances of misuse or accidental damage. To reduce these risks, organizations should follow the principle of least privilege – only granting the minimum access levels necessary to internal actors.

Weak Cybersecurity Policies

Organizations that lack robust cybersecurity policies and procedures or fail to enforce them consistently are more susceptible to insider risks. That’s why clear guidelines for handling sensitive information, access controls, potential incident response, and employee accountability are essential for mitigating real insider threats.

Expanded Attack Surface

An expanded attack surface occurs when a company increases the number of devices, applications, or network access points, such as through remote work setups or by adding new technologies. Each new element added to the network can offer new opportunities for insiders to exploit.

Lack of Employee Awareness

Employees who don’t know your security protocols or what could happen if they don’t follow them directly increase your organization’s insider risks. If they aren’t trained to spot phishing scams, keep data secure, and understand the company’s insider risk policies, they could accidentally cause a security breach.

Social Engineering

Social engineering is a manipulation technique in which attackers trick employees into giving up private information and access to company systems.

How to Prevent Insider Threats: The Rule of 3

The “rule of three” in insider risk management is a framework proposed by Gartner to focus on three critical aspects of insider threats: who, what, and how.  Here’s a breakdown of each element: 

Who (The Actors): This focuses on identifying individuals who might pose an insider risk.  It considers common factors like:

• Disgruntled employees: Employees unhappy with their job situation, facing termination, or having financial problems might be more susceptible to insider threats.
• Negligent employees: Employees who lack proper training or awareness might accidentally expose sensitive data. Examples include mishandling sensitive documents, using weak passwords, or falling into phishing attacks.
• Privileged users: Employees with high-level access to systems and data pose a greater risk if they become malicious. Companies must monitor and audit their actions closely to detect potential misuse of privileges.
• Third-party contractors: These individuals may not be subject to the same rigorous security training or have different motivations than regular employees.

What (The Threats): Understanding how insiders could harm the organization. Here are some common threats:

• Data breaches: Insiders might steal or leak sensitive data, such as customer information, intellectual property, or financial records, intentionally or accidentally.
• Sabotage: Disgruntled employees might damage IT systems or disrupt operations to cause harm to the organization. This could be motivated by revenge, ideological beliefs, or personal gain.
• Espionage: Insiders might steal confidential information for personal gain or sell it to competitors. This type of insider threat targets trade secrets, upcoming products, or strategic plans.
• Intellectual property theft: Involves stealing ideas, inventions, or creative expressions on which the organization holds legal rights.

How (The Methods): This focuses on how insiders might use to carry out their threats. Some standard methods include:

• Social engineering: Manipulating insiders into breaking standard security procedures to gain unauthorized access to company systems and information.
• Phishing attacks: Deceptive emails or messages designed to steal credentials or infect devices with malware. Insiders may help these attacks by providing information about the company’s systems, how employees work, or who to target.
• Exploiting vulnerabilities: Using system security weaknesses to gain unauthorized access. This might involve malicious actions like installing malware, creating backdoors, or changing system functionalities.

Organizations can develop more comprehensive insider risk management solutions by considering these three aspects (who, what, and how). Now, let’s put this into the context of mitigation goals.

Mitigation goals 

Mitigation goals include:

• Deter: Deterrence strategies prevent insider threats by establishing clear insider risk policies, conducting regular security training, and enforcing consequences for violations.
• Detect: This involves monitoring user activity and systems for risky behavior that might indicate an insider threat. This can include data loss prevention (DLP) tools, user activity monitoring (UAM), and security information and event management (SIEM) systems.
• Disrupt: This involves preventing an insider threat from causing harm, such as deactivating accounts, removing compromised systems, and initiating an incident response plan. Your rapid response teams should also have procedures to act quickly, including legal action if needed.

13 Best Practices for Insider Risk Management

From data breaches to intellectual property theft, the consequences of insider attacks can be devastating.

Implementing robust insider risk management practices is crucial to protecting your organization’s assets and reputation. Below, we’ll check out some of the best practices for insider risk management strategies:

1. Regularly Asses and Prioritize Insider Risks

This involves analyzing employee roles, access levels, and behavioral patterns to pinpoint riskier areas. Prioritizing internal risks based on potential impact and likelihood helps you better organize resources and implement targeted security measures.

2. Control Access to Your Systems and Data

Access control is fundamental in minimizing insider threats. This means ensuring employees can only access the data necessary to do their jobs. Having the least privileged access policies significantly reduces the risk of accidental or malicious data exposure, and you can use role-based access controls and multifactor authentication to monitor this risk appropriately.

3. Manage Password Use

Organizations should set strict password rules that demand complex and unique passwords that are changed regularly. It’s also essential to teach employees the risks of using the same password for multiple accounts and how to keep their login information safe.

4. Ensure Data Security

Be sure to use data encryption when storing and sending data to keep sensitive information safe from unauthorized access. Data loss prevention (DLP) technologies can help track and stop data breaches by identifying risky activity. Regular checks and compliance audits make sure that data protection steps are always in place and working well.

5. Continuously Monitor Employees and Third-Party Activity

This includes tracking unusual access patterns, file movements, and other signs of potential malicious actor activity. You can also leverage behavioral analytics to understand baseline behaviors and detect anomalies. However, this type of monitoring should be conducted transparently and following legal and ethical standards.

6. Keep a Close Eye on Privileged Users

Privileged users (e.g., IT administrators and executives) have authorized access to critical data, making them potential high-risk insiders. Implementing privileged access management (PAM) solutions, enforcing separation of duties, and maintaining detailed audit logs of all privileged activities are essential for privileged accounts.

7. Ensure a Quick Response to Possible Risks

If you detect potential insider threats, you must have a rapid response plan and act immediately.

This includes having a comprehensive response plan that outlines roles, responsibilities, and actionable steps to quickly contain, investigate, and mitigate potential insider incidents when detected.

8. Regularly Review User Access Rights

Reviewing user access rights regularly also helps ensure that only individual users can access sensitive data and systems. This should be done at least annually or following any significant change in an employee’s role.

9. Platform Regular Security and Compliance Audits

These audits should assess both technical controls and administrative processes. Insights gained from audits can drive improvements in security policies and procedures.

Audit trails are also beneficial for forensic investigations if a security breach occurs.

10. Invest in Security Technology

Technologies such as artificial intelligence for behavior analytics, intrusion detection systems, and secure access service edge (SASE) can improve your organization’s ability to detect and respond to risky activities.

11. Foster a Culture of Security

Promote a strong security culture through top-down leadership support, clear policies and consequences, and open communication channels.

12. Implement a Whistleblower Program

A whistleblower program provides employees with a confidential way to report suspicious activities or concerns without fear of retaliation. Such insider risk programs should be promoted actively within the organization to ensure employees know and understand how to use them.

13. Improve Employees’ Cybersecurity Awareness

Conduct regular security awareness training programs to educate your employees on insider threat risks, data handling best practices, social engineering tactics, and their role in supporting a secure environment. A well-informed workforce is the first line of defense against cyber threats.

How to Develop an Effective Insider Risk Management Program

Developing an effective insider risk management program requires a proactive and multi-layered approach. Here’s a breakdown of the key steps involved:

Conduct a Risk Assessment

• Identify your organization’s critical assets (data, systems, intellectual property).
• Analyze potential insider threats and their likelihood of occurring.
• Consider different types of insiders (negligent, malicious, compromised) and their potential methods (data exfiltration, sabotage, etc.).
• Prioritize risks based on their severity and likelihood.

Develop and Enforce Policies

• Create clear policies outlining acceptable data handling practices, password security, and consequences for policy violations.
• Define acceptable use policies for company resources (email, internet, devices).
• Implement strict access controls and least privilege principles.
• Develop an insider risk program policy outlining prevention, detection, and response measures.
• Ensure policies cover insider threats (fraud, IP theft, sabotage, etc.).

Implement Security Measures

• Use access controls (principle of least privilege) to grant users only the minimum access required for their job functions.
• Enforce strong password policies and implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) for added security.
• Data encryption protects sensitive information, even if it is compromised.
• Consider Data Loss Prevention (DLP) tools to monitor data movement and prevent unauthorized exfiltration.
• Use antivirus software, anti-malware solutions, and endpoint detection and response (EDR) systems to secure all endpoints, including mobile devices and remote employee workstations.

Train Your Employees

• Organize regular security awareness training to teach employees how to identify and avoid social engineering attacks, phishing scams, and other threats.
• Train employees on proper data handling procedures and reporting suspicious activity.
• Create a healthy environment where employees feel comfortable raising concerns about potential insider threats.
• Tailor training content to different roles, access levels, and potential risk exposure.

Monitor User Activity

• Implement User Activity Monitoring (UAM) tools to detect unusual behavior patterns that might indicate an insider threat.
• Monitor system logs for suspicious activity, such as unauthorized access attempts or data transfers outside business hours.
• Review access logs to identify potential issues and adjust access controls as needed.
• Provide a system for employees to explain alerts that involve their activities, which can help reduce false positives and improve system accuracy.

Establish an Incident Response Plan

• Develop a plan outlining how to respond to a suspected insider threat incident.
• Define roles and responsibilities for different risk teams involved in the response.
• Include procedures for investigation, containment, eradication, and recovery.
• Regularly test your incident response plan to ensure its effectiveness.
• Establish a communication plan for internal and external stakeholders.
• Create processes for post-incident analysis and implementing corrective actions.

Continuous Improvement

• Review and update your insider risk management program regularly based on new threats, vulnerabilities, and best practices.
• Conduct periodic risk assessments to identify any changes.
• Stay informed about evolving insider threat trends and adjust your program accordingly.
• Invest in new technologies and tools to enhance detection and prevention capabilities.

How Teramind Can Help Manage Insider Risk

Insider threats pose a significant risk to organizations, with data breaches and intellectual property theft costing billions annually. That’s where Teramind steps in. Teramind’s comprehensive insider risk management platform helps businesses proactively detect, investigate, and mitigate internal risks.

Here’s precisely how we can help you:

Enhanced User Activity Monitoring

Teramind goes beyond traditional security tools by continuously monitoring user activity across various endpoints, including remote desktops, laptops, and mobile devices. This allows for a deeper understanding of user behavior patterns and enables the identification of anomalies that might deviate from a user’s baseline activity. For instance, accessing sensitive data outside of regular work hours or downloading many confidential files could be red flags for potential insider threats.

Proactive Threat Detection with UEBA

Teramind‘s UEBA technology analyzes individual actions, user behavior patterns, and context. This allows it to detect subtle changes in user behavior that might indicate malicious intent. Suspicious activities like attempts to bypass security controls, access unauthorized data, or escalate privileges can be identified before they escalate into major incidents.

Data Loss Prevention (DLP) to Mitigate Risk

Teramind can help prevent data exfiltration attempts by insider threats by monitoring data movement and identifying suspicious activities. It can detect attempts to upload sensitive data to unauthorized cloud storage or external devices, allowing for timely intervention before a data breach occurs.

Real-Time Alerts for Faster Response

Teramind generates real-time alerts for suspicious user activity, enabling security teams to investigate potential insider threats promptly. This allows for faster containment and mitigation of damage, minimizing the impact of an insider incident.

Improved User Behavior Insights

Teramind provides valuable insights into user behavior patterns. This information can inform access control decisions. Organizations can adjust access privileges or implement stricter monitoring for specific users by identifying risky user behavior.

Don’t wait for a data breach to be your wake-up call. Secure your organization by booking a demo with Teramind today!

FAQs

What is the role of insider risk management policy?

Insider risk management policy is crucial in protecting organizations against internal threats. It helps identify and mitigate the risks associated with employee actions by implementing measures such as user behavior analytics and data loss prevention to safeguard sensitive information.

What is the difference between DLP and insider risk management?

Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is a component of insider risk management. While insider risk management encompasses a broader approach to identifying and mitigating internal threats, DLP specifically focuses on monitoring data movement and preventing unauthorized access or exfiltration of sensitive information.

What is insider threat management?

Insider threat management is identifying, monitoring, and mitigating risks posed by internal employees or trusted individuals who may intentionally or unintentionally compromise sensitive data or systems. It involves implementing strategies and technologies to detect and respond to insider threats, ensuring the security and integrity of an organization’s assets.

What is the meaning of insider risk?

Insider risk refers to the potential harm or damage to an organization by its employees or trusted individuals. These risks can include intentional or unintentional actions compromising sensitive data or systems, making insider risk management crucial for safeguarding an organization’s assets.