When you think about cybersecurity, you most often think of external threat actors like malware, ransomware, spearphishing campaigns, and other harmful behavior. However, insider threats account for 60% of data breaches, and 74% of firms are at least moderately exposed to them. Your organization should be concerned about its own employees, not everyone else’s. These risks have the potential to inflict considerable harm, thus immediate action is required.

Monitoring insider threats can be a security concern because it necessitates constant monitoring of personnel, which may violate privacy and trust. However, it’s worth noting that such monitoring is frequently lawful and required to defend the company’s interests.

So, how do you prevent different types of insider threats? There are many possible solutions.

Ways to Prevent Insider Threats

Organizational buy-in is required to prevent insider threats. From executives and security leaders to the lowest-level staff, everyone plays an important role. Everyone should recognize that cybersecurity is everyone’s responsibility, not just a few. The implications of insider risks are detrimental to everyone. When security is built into the culture, it is easier to implement advanced technology and other cybersecurity solutions to prevent insider threats.

1. Implement an Insider Threat Detection Solution

As the name suggests, an insider threat detection solution like Teramind works in real-time to detect potential threats. Insider threats may be intentional or unintentional, and an insider threat detection solution helps monitor both in a complete threat landscape. 

Whether a compromised employee is trying to share company assets with a competitor for financial gain or a negligent employee forgot to log out of a third-party tool on a public device, an insider threat detection program can identify threats as they emerge.

Implementing a technological solution is the first step. Your organization must also develop an effective insider threat mitigation and response plan for malicious insiders and other types of insider attacks to prevent them from happening again.

2. Implement User & Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA)

User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) is a technology that uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to actively monitor user activity on corporate networks. It’s not just about detecting suspicious conduct; it’s also about determining what’s normal and abnormal in your organization’s digital environment.

By observing activity patterns and employee access to classified systems, UEBA creates user profiles based on regular daily actions. This enables it to detect anomalous behavior or outright suspicious activity, such as unauthorized employee access to important systems or the exfiltration of critical assets outside of working hours or from an unusual location.

When learning what is and isn’t normal during a particular employee’s day, UEBA can flag anomalous behavior or outright suspicious activity, such as unauthorized employee access to critical systems or somebody exfiltrating critical assets outside of work hours or from an unusual location.

Most insider threat detection solutions, like Teramind, include UEBA as a core feature of the security suite. UEBA is invaluable in detecting suspicious behavior, but it’s also helpful in identifying employees’ most productive hours, recognizing top performers, and finding ways to improve efficiency.

3. Set Up Employee Monitoring

Employee monitoring is part of what enables UEBA. Starting an employee surveillance program might be a risky proposition for some businesses. Most employees dislike knowing that their company is monitoring their activities. (Let’s be honest, everyone is guilty of using personal social media while at work.) Fortunately, ethical employee monitoring benefits both businesses and employees.

An successful user activity monitoring plan requires a strong solution and well defined goals. Employees must understand that this is not about micromanaging or invading their privacy. Personal conversations and activities on their devices will not be tracked. This security and performance measure is solely tied to their working lives and is intended to safeguard the safety of your firm and its assets.

4. Use Data Loss Prevention Software

As previously stated, insider risks account for 60% of all data breaches. A data breach occurs when an external endpoint acquires unauthorized access to a company’s assets. A data leak occurs when someone shares data outside the organization without permission. In any case, data loss can pose a substantial security risk to enterprises.

Read Also: Top 10 Cyber Security Tools and Technologies

Teramind solutions include Data Loss Prevention (DLP) software, which monitors all endpoints and tracks permitted and unauthorized access to enterprise data sources. DLP software can take action when it detects potential data breaches or leaks. For example, if someone without access permissions tries to remove or edit data, or if someone accidentally sends significant corporate assets to an external email address, DLP will automatically stop and document the action.

5. Set Up Threat Modeling

Threat modeling is a proactive strategy for cybersecurity. It occurs when security teams employ hypothetical scenarios, system designs, and testing to assist in safeguarding vital systems and data. By modeling a variety of threats, you can uncover vulnerabilities and recommend corrective actions to improve the organization’s security posture. It’s not enough to simply detect possible threats; you also need to prepare for them and train your human and cybersecurity responders to deal with them successfully.

6. Use an Endpoint Monitoring Solution

With remote work, a corporate network may have personal devices worldwide, gaining legitimate access to digital systems. This creates a complex web of employees, devices, and access privileges that can be difficult to detangle. That’s where an endpoint monitoring solution comes in.

Each device with in-office and remote access to a network is an endpoint. An endpoint monitoring solution monitors all endpoints in real-time, recognizing those with legitimate access and flagging unrecognized devices as potential threats. This is particularly important in today’s digital landscape, where remote work and the use of personal devices are becoming more common. By monitoring all endpoints, you can ensure that only authorized devices access your network, reducing the risk of insider threats and improving endpoint data loss prevention.

7. Eliminate Idle Accounts

Employee turnover is a normal component of any organization’s lifecycle. When employees leave, their dormant accounts might constitute a serious cyber hazard. Malicious actors can compromise unused accounts that nevertheless have access to valuable assets.

Even more probable, dissatisfied former employees who keep access privileges can quickly abuse them to hurt the organization for personal gain. Insider threats can have serious effects, ranging from financial loss and reputational damage to legal ramifications and a loss of customer trust.

8. Monitor Your Network

Most internet activity will occur over a corporate network unless you operate a fully remote business. That network may have specific rules and security protocols, like requiring users to use a VPN to access it or blocking dangerous websites. Active network security is smart, but it’s crucial to continually monitor network activity to recognize if employees bypass protocols, visit insecure sites, click on dangerous links, or communicate with potentially dangerous individuals.

9. Implement Remote Desktop Control

One of the best weapons against active insider threats is the remote monitoring and control of devices. This gives security leaders an extra measure of defense against both intentional and unintentional threats. With remote desktop control, you can quickly respond to potential threats, such as a disgruntled employee attempting to exfiltrate data or a negligent insider being fooled by a phishing attempt. This immediate response can help prevent or minimize the damage caused by such threats.

Importantly, remote desktop control only applies to employees using endpoints connected to the company network. So, whether a disgruntled employee is attempting to exfiltrate data or a negligent insider was fooled by a phishing attempt, remote desktop control allows teams to take control of the desktop to remediate security concerns immediately.

10. Conduct Employee Sentiment Analysis

An often undervalued component of cybersecurity programs is simply understanding your employees’ general well-being. By performing sentiment analysis, either covertly using employee monitoring to observe communication channels or inviting participation in a survey, you can gauge employees’ overall sentiment towards the company and their work.

This can help you identify potential insider threats early on, as employees who are unhappy or dissatisfied are more likely to engage in malicious activities. If employees are miserable, there’s a chance they could become insider threats. 

While it’s unusual for employees to be so unhappy as to actively seek to ding their employer’s stock price or hurt its reputation, disgruntled employees could be recruited to assist in a cyberattack. More likely, unhappy employees probably want to leave the company, and competitors may be champing at the bit to lure them and whatever trade secrets they have access to.

11. Investigate Unusual Employee Behavior

Leveraging UEBA and employee monitoring will help identify suspicious and anomalous activity. Your security team must determine what is and is not worth investigating. You can set intelligent alerts and rules in your insider threat detection solution to flag what activity should be deemed suspicious. 

However, you’ll still need humans to investigate unusual activity. People are complex creatures; sometimes, something as simple as an employee’s curiosity about what another team is doing could be flagged as suspicious. Human investigation will delineate the difference between normal and abnormal behavior.

12. Train Employees on Security Best Practices

Creating an employee training curriculum to teach them security best practices will help avoid accidental insider threat incidents. Employees should understand their role in keeping the entire organization secure, from basic best practices like updating passwords regularly to organization-specific security policies. Training employees on security best practices will help them avoid falling victim to scams or phishing attacks and allow them to spot potential security risks ahead of time.

13. Set Up an Employee Reporting Program

Well-trained employees who understand security best practices and potential insider threat indicators make excellent watchdogs. You’re not running a surveillance camp, but setting up an employee reporting program where employees can confidentially report security concerns will help prevent insider threats. 

The goal isn’t to get employees tattling on one another but to make everyone feel comfortable reporting a person of concern they think might be up to something so that security teams can quietly investigate.

Most activities that employees report may not be worth worrying about. Still, to create a strong security posture within the organization, employees should feel like they can safely and anonymously report potential incidents — especially accidental ones — without retribution for themselves or anyone who makes an innocent mistake.

14. Build a Threat Hunting Team

Depending on the size of your organization, you may have a robust cybersecurity team with a range of responsibilities. You may only have one security expert. A threat-hunting squad doesn’t have to be comprised of cybersecurity experts (although it does help). 

Implementing an insider threat detection solution allows your organization to recruit anyone to join a threat-hunting team. The software does most of the work to prevent insider threats. 

However, to develop more robust security protocols, incident response plans, and patch vulnerabilities, you should hire or create a threat-hunting team to help formalize how your organization responds to insider threats.

15. Develop a Data Handling Policy

If you’re doing business in the European Union, your company must comply with GDPR. Data regulations are a bit looser in the US and other parts of the world. Still, you should have a data handling policy that communicates to clients, customers, and partners how you will store, manage, and use their data. Then, you need to adhere to that policy religiously.

Data handling policies provide peace of mind, are legally required in most industries, and give employees clear guidance on handling data. Employees must understand your data handling policy to avoid compliance violations that can lead to data breaches, leaks, or other data mishandling that can result in regulatory action or legal liabilities.

Final Thoughts

Insider attacks are a prevalent and growing cybersecurity problem for businesses of all sizes. Fortunately, there are numerous ways to mitigate unintended and malicious risks through the use of technology and education.

Preventing insider threats requires developing a security culture, detecting dangerous actions, and applying adaptive security measures, which can range from adopting an insider threat detection system to simple employee training. Solutions such as Teramind provide complete employee monitoring and security technologies that can serve as the cornerstone for any insider threat program.