The Insider that rarely gets questioned…

News and information from the Advent IM team.

Insider Threat certainly isn’t going away, is it? Reading the continual survey results and news items I see published, it will still be an issue for a long time to come. We know that a lot of the Risk that Insiders bring can be mitigated with good policy and process combined with tech that is fit for purpose. But what of those insiders we don’t really like to  challenge? I speak of the C-Suite; our boards and senior management… surely they couldn’t possibly indulge in risky behaviour?

Risky behaviour is actually quite prevalent in our board rooms, security-wise I mean. (Check out https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/38632509277427972/) Unfortunately, some of the info assets that this level of colleague has access to is quite privileged and so in actual fact, the security around their behaviour actually needs to be tighter but in reality things are not always this watertight and IT security and other security functions will make huge exceptions, based upon the role and seniority instead of looking at the value of the information asset and how it needs to be protected. (Check out https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/38632509276681553/)

Its worth noting that senior execs are frequently the targets of spear phishing and given the level and sensitivity of assets they have access to, this is a huge risk to be taking with organisational security. Ransomware could also be deployed through this method and as a means of coercion. Whilst considering this level of access, we also need to think about the purpose of attack. If this was part of an industrial espionage type of operation, the plan might not be to steal data, it could be to destroy or invalidate it, in situ, in order to affect stock prices, for instance.  It is also worth noting that ex-execs or managers can still be a target and that means they still constitute a potential organisational threat.

Privileged access users like system administrators (sysadmins) also pose a potential threat in the same way as senior business users as there may little or no restrictions on what they can access or edit. A rogue sysadmin or similar could cause absolute chaos in an organisation, but the organisation might not even realise it, if they have also got the ability to cover their tracks. According to the Vormetric 2015 Insider Threat Report, the biggest risk group was privileged users and Executive Management categories were responsible for 83% of the overall risk from Insiders. Yet according to the same piece of research, only 50% have Privileged User Access Management in place and just over half had Data Access monitoring in place.

One more layer to add on top of this would be BYOD. Many businesses have considered whether BYOD is a good choice for them and many have decided to adopt it. Whilst data suggests it may contribute to data breach in adopting organisations, it can be a problem even for those who do not adopt it, as yet again senior execs are allowed latitude regarding the devices they use and may not be subject to the same scrutiny or oversight that general employees are. We know that almost a third of employees have lost up to 3 work mobile devices, we do not know how many have lost their own device also or whether it contained sensitive or valuable business data. We do know that some of these will be senior executives though and this, combined with other risky behaviours (check this out https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/38632509277975844/) will be a major contributor to the risk profile that they represent.

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