Ep. 2: Stopping Insider Threats

Cybersecurity is not an IT problem to solve—it's a business risk to manage. In the Managing Cyber Risk podcast series, Mark Sangster, Vice President and Industry Security Strategist with eSentire, and Cybercrime Magazine’s Hillarie McClure lead conversations with cybersecurity experts, using the dollars-and-cents language of the C-suite to expose the issues, challenges and pitfalls which are often obscured by ones and zeroes.

“The more you sweat in practice, the less you bleed in battle.”

Those words come from Daniel Stiegman, Senior Insider Threat Intelligence Analyst at Equifax, in the second episode of our Managing Cyber Risk series, Stopping Insider Threats, and they discuss the importance of why organizations must prepare proactively for cyber attacks.

While enormous attention is rightfully paid to external threat actors like ransomware gangs and nation states, the downside of this focus is that it can cause organizations to overlook threats from within—threats which can be just as dangerous and more difficult to detect.

Insider threats are often misunderstood. While malicious employees do exist, in many cases, employees are usually taken advantage of—with no harmful motives of their own—to unknowingly assist in the activities of a threat actor.

However, insider threats tend to be more effective because employees are routinely given more access and privileges than is needed. Not all access is created equal, and not every employee—no matter how senior—needs the access they’re asking for. Organizations have to get diligent about “wanting” access versus “needing” access.

Daniel explains that organizations should not look for a single, specific insider, but that instead they should understand patterns of behavior that correspond to people doing their job—and deviations that might be suggestive of malicious activity.

Unfortunately, many organizations don’t recognize the risk of insider threats. Some may think it’s only a problem in large enterprises—Mark quashes this idea with a powerful example—and others may be reluctant to accept that the trust they place in their team may be violated.

While it can be difficult to confront the possibility that an employee may engage in or assist with an attack, managing cyber risk effectively demands that you do. As Daniel says, “Don’t become complacent—that’s the opportunity [threat actors] look for.”

Listen to Episode 2, Stopping Insider Threats, of the eSentire Managing Cyber Risk podcast series in which Daniel Stiegman joins Mark and Hillarie to explore why organizations need to learn to say no to employees to curb insider threat and and learn about:

• Why insider threats are so dangerous and likely underreported
• Why the landscape is always changing and why insider threats aren’t limited to malicious employees
• Why the principle of least privilege is so important
• Why identifying insider threats requires a unique approach
• What to do after detecting an insider threat
• Best practices to reduce the risk and impact of such threats

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Be sure to stay tuned for more Managing Cyber Risk. In the next episode, we take a look inside eSentire’s renowned Threat Response Unit (TRU) to learn how they keep pace with the ever-shifting threat landscape.