3 Easy Steps to Mitigate Insider Threats

This article will provide 3 easy steps that can be quickly implemented today and will certainly mitigate insider threats within your company. Insider threats are increasing at companies everywhere in the world. It’s only a matter of time before you or someone you know is affected by an insider threat, the goal of this article is to explain how easy it can be to implement, monitor, and mitigate insider threats very quickly.

1. Install endpoint security software on all devices your organization owns and controls

This is the first and possibly the biggest step in deterring insider threats. Just by having monitoring controls in place at every endpoint where data is transferred, you will have a running log of activity from each employee. It is a given that most activity is considered safe and normal, but there might be instances where data theft has occurred. Without any endpoint protection deployed on your devices, you will simply not know about it.
The Employee Monitoring module that is part of InterGuard is the world’s most comprehensive user activity monitoring software that captures a digital record of every activity that an employee does on the computer and lets you know exactly when data theft occurs so you can take immediate action. Reviewing activity is simple… you login in to your secure account (cloud based or on premise), review the activity of each employee (or department) in your company. You will quickly see all activities including: File Tracking, Emails, Social Media Activity, Keystrokes, Instant Messages, Web Activity, and Screenshots and much more.

TIP: Install monitoring software on all devices from day one. Many companies will start with a set number of computers and add more computers over time. While that might seem like a good way to get started with security auditing, it creates holes in your endpoint protection and will only protect the computers that you think need to be monitored for insider threats. You would not purchase an insurance policy for half of your vehicle, why would you assume the risk by protecting a portion of your devices from employee theft? Simply put, you need to monitor all computers if you want complete security audit controls in place.

2. Create Meaningful User Activity Reports

Reports are another takeaway that needs to be addressed when it comes to identifying and eliminating insider threats. Meaning, it’s one thing to collect all of this incredibly useful data, but data without organization can be a huge challenge for anyone because data investigations are not necessarily everyone’s cup of tea. Yes, InterGuard makes it easy with the user interface, but that does not mean one will have the time to sift over data for each user or department. There must be an easier way to know when insider threats are happening, right…

InterGuard has more than 100 pre-built reports that provide you with instant analytics on employee electronic/digital activity along with sophisticated user behavior reporting so you may start predicting when an insider threat is about to occur based on their behaviors. You may easily create your own custom reports based on a myriad of employee activity.

TIP: When you first implement insider threat prevention software it is always recommended to cast a wide net, review data, and make refinements as you go along (with respect to reports and notifications). Meaning, setting up a lot of different types of user activity reports and alert word notifications so you can decide for yourself what type of data is most important for you to know about, then after you have made the determination, you may scale back as you see fit.

3. Be Alerted When Internal Data Breaches Happen

Coupled with reporting, being alerted that data is leaving the organization is just as critical to capturing the data. Think about how many times you have read in the news about a business owner wishing that they knew sooner about a rouge employee stealing company confidential data from them. It would save them a fortune!

That is where InterGuard saves the day because you can set up specific triggers that send you instant email alerts the second an employee does something, like insider threats. You receive smart automated alerts and reports via email, including notifications on specific user behavior, website history and when any alert world (selected by you) is typed or viewed on screen. InterGuard does the heavy lifting by providing insight into the data that matters, instead of leaving you to search for that “needle in a haystack”.

TIP: You can create custom alerts by keywords (we even have lists that you may upload), but you may even create alerts based on website categories or user behavior. So, for example, if you wanted to know every time someone was to visit a website deemed malicious, anytime a user/department were to go to a site in that category, you would be notified immediately. This would be useful in instance where someone might be visiting a known hacking site where they buy lists from people…

In closing, there is a wide range of tools available to employers that are looking to mitigate insider threats, we believe that InterGuard is one of the best available for any size organization. Within minutes you can install configure and deploy InterGuard to PC/Mac/Mobile devices and record all user activities. It goes a step further than that by organizing all data in easy to understand reports and send you alerts and notifications (that you can customize) so you are aware of the exact moment that the “Who. What, When Where, and Why” an insider threat has occurred.

About Awareness Technologies

Awareness Technologies develops award winning monitoring software that records and controls all end user activity on all PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod, Android phones and tablets, and blackberry mobile devices.

As the pioneer for Unified Insider Threat Prevention, Awareness Technologies’ SaaS-based service is easily available and affordable for businesses of any size – especially the SMB market. Architected at the endpoint, clients can access 4 technologies including DLP (Data Loss Prevention), Web Filtering, Employee Monitoring and Laptop Recovery, through one agent download and one control console.

Awareness Technologies has over 10,000 businesses world-wide currently depending on its solutions to protect their data from insider threats, and has been named on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500, Inc. 5000 and Software 500. In addition to running seamlessly in a local OS environment, Awareness Technologies’ products are also Citrix and VMware ready.

Our solutions allow businesses insight and provide details regarding employee activities on and off the network to make certain they are staying in alignment with the guidelines of company policies and procedures in a comprehensive, yet easy to manage cloud based environment.