Organizations all over the world are facing challenges to ensure security. Every organization needs security for:
- Sensitive information,
- Proprietary data, and
- Intellectual property
Even though external threats often grab the headlines, internal threats often work in a more disastrous way.
That’s why mitigating insider threats is even more essential as long all the access is in the hand. Eventually, insider threat mitigation is now considered a critical component of modern cybersecurity strategies.
However, today we’ll dig into the facts on how a company should mitigate insider threats to ensure protection for their assets. So, keep reading till the end to learn about the effective solutions.
What Is Insider Threat Mitigation?
Insider Threat Mitigation generally encompasses strategies to counter risks posed by authorized insiders like employees. It simply aims to protect an organization’s resources.
This approach integrates physical security, personnel education, and data-focused principles.
The entire process involves:
- Defining threats
- Detecting threats
- Identifying threats
- Assessing threats
- Managing threats
Effective practices like ensuring enterprise-wide risk assessments, enforcing consistent policies, and imparting security awareness training to staff can help mitigate the threat. It is also essential to detect concerning behaviors and conduct threat assessments as well.
Additionally, proactive management can redirect potential harm toward mitigation.
That’s why big head companies ensure a better security service.
Different Types of Insider Threats
Generally, there can be different types of insider threats both small and large companies may have to face. Knowing the threats can help people direct them from the first place. Let’s check out the general insider threats that commonly happen.
- Malicious Insiders: They intentionally exploit their authorized access for personal gain or to harm the organization
- Negligent Insiders: Employees who inadvertently compromise security. It can be an accidental data leak, improper handling of sensitive information, or failure to follow security protocols.
- Accidental Insiders: Similar to negligent insiders, accidental insiders unknowingly contribute to security breaches because of unintentional actions.
- Contractors and Third-Party Insiders: External entities with authorized access, such as contractors, vendors, or partners, can also pose insider threats.
- Privilege Abusers: Insiders who misuse their legitimate access privileges to access sensitive data or systems beyond their job scope can cause significant harm.
- Data Thieves: These insiders focus on stealing valuable data, like customer lists, trade secrets, or proprietary information, with the intent to use or sell it for personal gain.
- Leavers: Former employees who still have access to systems and data can become insider threats if their access is not promptly revoked.
Strategies for Insider Threat Mitigation
Now, the question is how to mitigate the insider threat securely, right? Essentially, a manager or responsible employee of both a small and large company can prevent the risk of insider threat by following the strategic steps below.
Prioritize Risk Assessment Factors
Conducting thorough enterprise-wide risk assessments is essential to identify critical assets, vulnerabilities, and potential threats.
The responsible security manager should prioritize risks based on their potential impact and likelihood of occurrence.
Ensure Strong Access Controls
The companies should implement strict access controls that grant employees only the necessary permissions required for their roles. They can apply the principle of least privilege (POLP), and ensure that individuals have access only to the data and systems essential for their tasks.
Try User Behavior Analytics (UBA)
Advanced analytics management is essential to monitor user behaviors and detect anomalies. UBA systems usually help identify unusual patterns or deviations from typical behavior, raising alerts for further investigation.
Secure Data Loss Prevention Method (DLP)
Utilizing DLP solutions can be helpful to monitor and prevent the unauthorized sharing or transmission of sensitive data. It simply helps in blocking accidental or intentional data leaks.
Security Awareness Training
They should also arrange programs to regularly educate employees about:
- Cybersecurity best practices
- The importance of data protection
- How to recognize
- Report suspicious activities
Well-informed employees are a frontline defense against insider threats.
Establish A Set of Clear Policies and Procedures
The responsible manager should establish a set of comprehensive security policies and procedures. The set should clearly define the acceptable use of company resources, data handling protocols, and consequences for policy violations.
Make An Incident Response Plan
They should develop a robust incident response plan that is specifically tailored to insider threats. This plan should outline steps for identifying, containing, eradicating, and recovering from insider-related incidents.
Ensure Proper Monitoring and Auditing
The companies should have dedicated employees who will monitor user activities and access logs to detect unauthorized or suspicious actions. Regular audit simply ensures they remain up-to-date and aligned with business needs.
Establish An Exit Procedures for Offboarding Employees
The company should have established well-defined procedures for offboarding employees, contractors, and third-party entities. At the same time, they should revoke their access to systems and data upon termination or contract completion.
Conduct Regular Insider Threat Programs
A well-established cross-functional insider threat program or team including IT, HR, legal, and security personnel is also very effective in this case. Generally, collaborative efforts enhance the organization’s ability to detect and respond to threats.
Ensure Encryption and Data Protection
Additionally, the company should apply encryption to sensitive data both at rest and in transit. It usually minimizes the impact of a breach by rendering stolen data unreadable without proper decryption keys.
Hire A Reliable Security Service
And finally, the company should hire a reliable security service that can ensure both insider threat mitigation service and overall company security service at the same time. Sentry Security Service Limited is a perfect example of such a reliable security service for companies in Bangladesh.
How can a security service help in mitigating insider threats?
In the list of strategic steps, the final step is all about hiring a reliable security service. In this case, you might be confused about how a reliable security company can help protect the company’s assets from insider threats.
Well, here are some of the beneficial sides of hiring a security service to mitigate insider threats.
- Security service providers have experienced professionals with deep knowledge of insider threat landscapes who can assess an organization’s specific risks, design tailored strategies, and recommend best practices to mitigate these threats.
- They offer advanced tools and technologies for monitoring user activities, network traffic, and data access patterns.
- UBA tools offered by security services can analyze user behavior patterns to detect deviations from normal activities.
- EDR solutions that most renowned security services utilize simply enable real-time monitoring of endpoints.
- Security service providers can also assist in creating comprehensive incident response plans specifically tailored to insider threats.
- They offer 24/7 monitoring capabilities for around-the-clock visibility into an organization’s network and systems.
- Sometimes, they consolidate and analyze security event data from various sources for early detection and response to potential insider threats.
- Security service providers can also supply threat intelligence feeds that offer insights into emerging insider threat trends, tactics, and techniques.
- They can help in implementing robust access control measures to make sure that users have the appropriate level of access based on their roles and responsibilities.
If you are from Bangladesh, you don’t need to look further for a security service company that offers all these features. Sentry Security BD comes with everything you need to mitigate insider threats along with a lot of security-based benefits.
Wrapping Up
I’m sure that as an employee or owner, you must have a proper idea of how essential it is to mitigate insider threats for a company both large and small.
For the sake of the company’s security, one should never compromise with the security strength.
In this case, the role of a reliable security service company is incomparable. Hopefully, you have got my point. Thank you for your time.
