Techopedia: Insider Threat Awareness Month Special: Security Experts Share 8 Ways to Address Insider Threats

During Insider Threat Awareness Month, Techopedia connected with 8 cybersecurity leaders and analysts who shared guidance on how organizations can protect their systems from threat actors. One of which was NetSPI Field CISO Nabil Hannan. Read the preview below or view it online.

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Defending your organization from threat actors outside your network is one thing. But it’s another thing entirely when they reside inside your organization.

A single malicious insider has the potential to use their access to resources to leak all the high-value data, personal identifiable information (PII), and intellectual property they have access to on a day-to-day basis.

Research conducted by Cyberhaven has found that insider threats are so common that nearly one in 10 employees (9.4%) will exfiltrate data within a six-month period. Most commonly, data leaked includes customer data and source code.

This Insider Threat Awareness Month, Techopedia connected with some of the top security leaders and analysts in the enterprise market to examine how organizations can protect themselves against malicious insiders.

Below are their comments (edited for brevity and style).

8. Security Hygiene

“This National Insider Threat Awareness Month, it’s important to raise awareness around some of the most commonly exploited vulnerabilities within an organization’s internal network. According to NetSPI’s 2023 Offensive Security Vision Report – which is based on more than 300,000 pen testing engagements – we found that excessive internal permissions continue to plague organizations.

We witnessed network shares or SQL servers that unintentionally allowed access to all domain users, which often contain sensitive information, credentials to other services, or customer data (such as credit card numbers or PII).

Unexpected excessive privileges lead to a large number of internal users having access to unintended sensitive data. All it takes is one rogue employee to cause major damage.

Additionally, weak or default passwords continue to be used within organizations, especially when accessing internal networks that contain highly sensitive information.

Unlike interfaces exposed externally, interfaces on the internal network typically don’t require multi-factor authentication, making the likelihood of compromise much greater. Basic security hygiene, as well as an understanding of internal sharing protocols, can provide a solid foundation in bolstering protection against insider threats.”

– Nabil Hannan, Field CISO at NetSPI.

You can read the full article at https://www.techopedia.com/security-experts-share-8-ways-to-address-insider-threats!