Last week we took a look at the layoff wave, a lot of top tech firms laid off staff due to economic crisis and over employing during the lockdown as there was a big tech boom during the period. Read more: Tech layoffs and impact on the cybersecurity industry

Unfortunately, the effect of this wave is a widespread increase in insider threats. While the potential for insider threat is always a concern, it is particularly high during the termination process.

Discontented workers may attempt to steal information or business secrets to damage a company’s reputation, whilst other workers can try to transfer data—such as contact information and other confidential documents to their new employers.

How to protect your organization against Insider Threats?

An insider threat is a malicious threat to an organization that comes from people within the organization, such as employees, former employees, contractors, or business associates, who have inside information concerning the organization’s security practices, data, and computer systems.

Insiders may have a variety of motives, but most frequently, breaches are driven by financial gain. However, breaches might also be the consequence of negligence, sabotage, or anger directed at the employee.

Insider threats are challenging to spot since the threat actor has authorized access to the organization’s systems and data. The reason for this is that to successfully do their duties, employees require access to resources like email, cloud apps, and network resources. Depending on their position, some employees may additionally need access to confidential data including financials, patents, and customer information.

There are quite a several ways to prevent Insider threats but these are five ways to ensure them;

1. Document and consistently enforce policies and controls
   Each piece of security software, including appliances, needs its management policy and configuration documentation. Create policies concerning practically every employee interaction with the IT environment by working diligently with HR. You should, for instance, establish General data protection laws, a password management policy, an incident response policy, a third-party access policy, a policy for account management, a policy for user monitoring, etc.
   Your legal department must verify each of these policies, and your CEO must sign them. If a policy is broken and your investigation finds the offender, it is crucial to specify what steps will be done and what sanctions will be imposed.
   
2. Coordinate IT Security and HR
   Numerous accounts of IT security staff were abruptly laid off. IT security can be prepared with the help of the CISO and the head of HR working together. Many risks can be avoided by merely adding impacted employees to a watchlist and keeping an eye on their actions. HR may also inform IT security about specific employees who were passed over for a promotion or a pay hike.
   
3. Establish physical security in the work environment
   Hire a seasoned security crew that will adhere to your security guidelines in the letter. They ought to keep suspicious individuals out of locations where there are important IT objects (such as server rooms or rooms with switch racks). Have them check everyone’s IT equipment at the door and note anything they discover that deviates from the security baseline. Remember to lock up all server rooms.
   
4. Implement strict password and account management policies and practices
   All users should log in using credentials that are specific to them; each user should have their login ID and password. To successfully implement these policies, adhere to best practices for managing passwords and accounts.
   
5. Train Your Employees
   Regularly do anti-phishing training. The best strategy is for the business to send phishing emails to its users and concentrate training efforts on those who fail to recognize the email as a phishing attempt. This will lessen the number of workers and vendors who might end up as compromised insiders. Additionally, businesses should educate staff on how to recognize unsafe behavior in their colleagues and report it to IT security or HR.

Employees should be urged to disclose security concerns and instructed on how to lessen insider danger. Think about providing rewards for people that adhere to security best practices. Implement an insider threat detection system after acknowledging that you cannot entirely remove the insider threat.

If you would like to train your staff on security best practices, send us a mail at info@hacktales.com.ng