What Is an Insider Threat?
An insider threat is a security risk that arises from within the target company. It usually includes a current or former employee or business partner who has unwanted access to sensitive information or privileged accounts on an organization's network.
Traditional security procedures are often focused on external threats and are unable to detect an internal threat emerging from within the business.
Types of insider threats include:
Malicious Insider
Someone who utilizes legitimate credentials maliciously and purposely to steal information for monetary or personal gain. For example- an ancient employer, or a shrewd employee who sells confidential knowledge to a rival.

Careless Insider
An unwitting pawn who unintentionally exposes the system to external threats. This is the most common sort of insider threat, and it occurs as a result of human error, such as leaving a gadget unattended or falling prey to fraud. An unintentionally malicious employee could click on an unsecured link, infecting the machine with malware.

Mole
An imposter who has gained insider access to a privileged network despite being nominally an outsider. Being someone who impersonates staff or collaborators from outside the company.

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How To Protect Against an Insider Attack: Best Practices
- Protect critical assets Systems, technologies, facilities, and people are examples of physical or logical assets. Intellectual property, such as vendor data, proprietary software, drawings, and inner manufacturing methods, are also important assets.
- Enforce policies Clearly define organizational policies so that they may be enforced and misconceptions can be avoided. Everyone in the organization should be familiar with security protocols and understand their intellectual property (IP) rights so that privileged content developed by them is not shared.
- Increase visibility Implement solutions to keep track of staff actions and correlate data from various sources. Deception technology, for example, can be used to entice a malevolent insider or imposter and acquire visibility into their activities.
- Promote culture changes It is not only a matter of know-how, but also of attitudes and values, to ensure security. You should educate your personnel about security issues and seek to increase employee satisfaction to counteract negligence and address the motivations of hostile activity.
Benefits of an Insider Threat Detection Program:
A well-developed Insider Threat Detection Program also has the following advantages:
- An organization can understand the degree of risk by normalizing vast amounts of heterogeneous event data.
- Businesses can develop roles-based access restrictions as a result of their capacity to detect threats. Similarly, it aligns the information security and compliance control infrastructure around the most vulnerable elements.
- Insider threats frequently follow a similar path. Knowing these tendencies can help you fine-tune your insider threat detection program so that you can respond to threats faster.
- Reduce operational risk and minimize impact of insider threat incidents and data theft.
- Improve insider threat security program based on actual findings and leadership consensus.
- Prioritize insider threat security program budget and resources.
- Identify gaps in your technology stack’s ability to properly detect and prevent insider threats.
- Increase organizational return on investment.
Insider Threat Statistics
One-third of all organizations have faced an insider threat incident. The rest probably just don’t know it yet.
50%
of incidents where private or sensitive information was unintentionally exposed
40%
of incidents where employee records were compromised or stolen
33%
of incidents where customer records were compromised or stolen
32%
of incidents where confidential records (trade secrets or intellectual property) were compromised or stolen
How Aspire Can Help
Aspire enables organizations to detect and mitigate insider threat attacks in advance. Its user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) system protects enterprises from insider threats by automating detection and response, as well as monitoring devices and individuals on a continuous basis.
The Aspire UEBA solution employs artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect unusual, noncompliant, and suspicious behavior, alerting companies of potentially compromised accounts immediately. Regardless of whether users are on their corporate network or not, the Fortinet strategy ensures that enterprises obtain greater visibility and advanced protection.
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