The “insider threat” has been one of the greatest threats since the beginning of IT. One of the earliest insider threat cases I worked on involved spinning the rounding error of a bill calculation into a separate account. While it was a minuscule dollar amount on a transaction basis, at volume it was real money!
Over the years, the insider threat still remains dominant. The biggest security breaches I have investigated have all been an insider and were often not disclosed because the breach was in a business process and did not result in a public disclosure of regulated data. These types of breaches go vastly underreported due to the brand damage they bring to the company, and without a requirement, executive teams will often decide not to prosecute the case. When you look at breach notification statistics, recognize that the number is only a small portion of the actual breaches that occur.
How Has Insider Threat Evolved?
Complex business systems and access requirements have enabled a different kind of insider. One that is looking to do their job, just not the way you intended. These insiders, power users, and untrained users shoot the gaps in our systems and processes to be more efficient. They do so in the name of the customer, the business, and many times in the heat of the moment. I like to say they did all the wrong things for all the right reasons. This insider while well-defined has also evolved. As users moved to client-server and web applications they also began to have more access to more and more data and systems. These users were targets for common attacks known as “phishing,” “whaling,” “spear phishing,” and “business systems compromise,” with email being the primary means for attackers to target their prey.
Looking forward, the insider threat is going to continue and, due to the mobilization of the workforce, it will only grow in frequency and difficulty to detect. The movement of systems from on-premise to cloud applications makes it more difficult to detect an insider or threat agent posing as an insider. The data is not in the applications or organiz