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Your organisation’s data security is as important as your physical security. After all, data is the most important resource in the modern world and can be used to make or break companies wholly. Information falling into the wrong hands can be catastrophic, and wreak havoc on your business’s future plans.
However, your business is always at some kind of risk regarding security. One of these big risks is insider security — an inside employee becoming compromised regarding security, whether it be on purpose or by accident.
Ensuring that you know everything about insider security risks is vital, and that's why in this article, we’re going to go over the risk of insider security, as well as three key tips that will help you protect your organisation from this risk. We’ll also let you know how we can help you get started.
Insider security risk is the threat of a security risk from a current or past employee or contractor. This could be a disgruntled employee who wants to take vengeance, an ex-employee who works at a competitor, or even just an irresponsible employee.
It's not just the risk of someone going malicious, though. By failing to maintain your organisation’s ability to deal with these kinds of threats, anyone can put work in to access everything and change your business forever. This is why there are many different stopgates to ensure that something like this happens.
This doesn't even have to be on purpose, though. Carelessness can lead to insider leakage, the process in which your information is leaked by accident by someone within your organisation. On top of this, employees using insecure channels to communicate sensitive information can also lead to risks in this area.
Insider risks can also occur with contractors or other external parties in your organisation. Ensuring that these people don’t get access to any data that they shouldn’t have access to is vital, as they can also leak or take information away that could be considered confidential or sensitive.
Access control methods are vital for ensuring that nobody can enter your organisation’s data without authorisation, as well as confirming that whoever does have access to your data can only access everything they need to and nothing more.
There are a few different ways that you can go about implementing access control to help combat insider security risks —
• Strong Authentication Practices: Methods like multi-factor authentication will allow you to ensure that stolen credentials can’t be used to gain access. Also, enforce strong password policies and educate on password hygiene to ensure that credentials don’t leak.
• Privilege of Least Principle: Ensuring that everyone only has access to the information that they need and nothing more will let you restrict access to sensitive information, ensuring that lower-level employees can’t take advantage of free access and share sensitive information.
Ultimately, implementing access control to be able to ensure both of these tactics are implemented will make you far less open to insider security risks.
Secondly, ensuring that your employees are aware of security measures and protocols and the consequences of not following them will ensure that everyone is aware of their part to play in maintaining high levels of security.
After all, if part of the insider security risk is accidental data leakage and leaving a vulnerability open for people to gain credentials or access to sensitive data, it’s vital to make sure that everyone knows exactly how to make sure that nothing of the sort happens.
By ensuring that everyone in your organisation is thoroughly trained on every aspect of both personal security and the risks, consequences, and wider issues of sharing data, you’ll be able to begin creating a security-conscious culture in your organisation.
With this, it’ll begin to become automatic for people to be more conscious of their own security impact and will lead to less accidental leakage and ultimately reduce the all-around insider security risk.
Ultimately, education and access control won’t be enough to protect you against everything. Microsoft Purview’s Adaptive Protection is the solution to this and is the answer to the problem of insider security risk.
Adaptive Protection is a tool that was created by Microsoft for this specific use case. It uses machine learning algorithms to analyse user activity and identify behaviour that could lead to possible data breaches. This includes activities such as downloading large amounts of sensitive data, emailing external addresses frequently with confidential information attached, or trying to downgrade document security labels.
The tool will use the assessed risk level to adjust Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and access policies for those users, proactively protecting your organisation from potential threats. This is better than a blanket restriction placed on all users, as it allows those with a low-risk level to be able to work as normal.
Utilising Adaptive Protection with the other two tactics will ensure that you can create a well-rounded approach to the topic of insider security while giving you a strong and secure way of making sure that your business’s fate is in its own hands. After all, a threat could be lurking around any corner, and ensuring that you’re prepared is vital to facing threats in the modern world.
Insider security risk is a real threat to modern organisations, and you must know exactly how to protect yourself from it. After all, the first step is knowing how to, and these three tactics will help you take action fast.
If you’re looking for help with security in your organisation, reach out to us today. Our experts are here to help and will ensure that you have everything you need to be able to keep your organisation safe.
Get in touch with us now and see how we can help.
