How to Protect Against and Deal with the Malicious Insider Threat

Many, if not most, insider security threats to businesses come from employees who are poorly trained, careless, or in search of a convenient shortcut, not from employees with malicious intent. However, it doesn’t pay to ignore the fact that some employees may be disgruntled or compromised, and they may pose a malicious insider threat to your business. Because this is always a possibility, it’s important to have tools and processes that will help you identify and neutralize insider threats before they can harm your business. Take a look at what you need to know about protecting against and dealing with malicious insiders.

Limiting Access

Limiting access to only what an employee needs to access can help prevent malicious actions before they occur.

The fewer people have access to sensitive data and to essential systems, the better. Having lots of people who can access data and applications that they don’t need to be able to access to do their jobs makes your security weaker, and makes it more difficult to pinpoint a culprit if security is compromised.

Work on compartmentalizing your system so that individual employees can only access information and systems that they need, and do not have access areas of your network that are unnecessary for their job function. This is known as the Principle of Least Privilege and is an effective way of improving your company’s security.

Monitoring Your Network

Malicious activities usually come with warning signs, but they’re easy to miss if you’re not monitoring your network. Employees who are acting maliciously in order to harm your company may log into your network at unusual times or from strange places. They may download or print excessive amounts of files, or attempt to access systems that they don’t normally have access to.

These and other actions that spell trouble are all detectable with a good employee monitoring system. Employee monitoring can be somewhat controversial, but it’s not out-of-bounds for you to want oversight of what’s happening in your business. A good employee monitoring software system can help you detect troubling behavior without compromising the privacy of ordinary employees.

Handling Terminations and Reviews

Your IT team can take quick action to block access to terminated employees if they’re informed in a timely manner.

Often, the most dangerous employees are those who know that they’re likely to be terminated or laid off soon, or those who have recently been given a poor review or passed over for a raise or promotion. These employees can become disgruntled and may also be vulnerable to being paid or persuaded by competitors to take adverse actions against your company.

It’s important to involve your IT team in terminations and in other scenarios in which an employee might be especially tempted to cross the line. Given appropriate notice, IT professionals can take steps to bar or limit access and also to preserve important data that may be needed in the future.

Employee monitoring software is a valuable tool that can help organizations protect themselves from insider threats, whether or not they’re malicious. To find out more about how employee monitoring software can work for your company, take an online test drive today!