June 24, 2022 Category: Human Resources (5 minutes read)

10 Safety in the Workplace: Recognizing Suspicious Activity Can Stop Insider Attacks

External cybersecurity threats were once the most significant concern for any company. Everyone became more aware of the dangers posed to organizations by malicious insiders. Security professionals now recognize the severe consequences of negligent insiders, which are employees who act without malicious intent.

A 2018 Cybersecurity insiders report found that cybersecurity professionals are most worried about unintentional or accidental insider threats. These can be caused by negligence, carelessness, or compromised credentials. These professionals should be aware of these issues and take action. We've put together this list of tips to help you understand and avoid accidental insider threats.

1. Monitoring and Auditing Your Team's Access Privileges

Is your organization experiencing access problems? Cybersecurity Insiders also found that 37% of cybersecurity professionals surveyed consider excessive access privileges the most significant enabler of insider threats. If you share credentials or grant access without careful consideration, your network is vulnerable to accidental insider threats.

Just as you wouldn't give access to your home's security system if it were your neighbour, so shouldn't your employees. You can reduce your exposure by conducting an audit of the current state of privilege access within your organization, monitoring keys and developing stricter policies to grant access.

ActivTrak can be used to monitor remote vendor and privileged user access. To learn more, watch this product training video..

2. Implement Password Protection Policies

It is possible to get all your Access Ducks in one go and still have a password-related vulnerability. Is your company following a password policy Cybersecurity experts believe weak passwords or their reuse are the most significant enabler of insider threats. 44% of them consider wrong password sharing practices the primary culprit. Additionally, 56% say that weak passwords and passwords can lead to accidental insider attacks. Therefore, it is essential to take steps to ensure employees are safe.

Use strong passwords. Mental Floss recommends long passwords made up of nonsense phrases and may include numbers and symbols mixed up randomly.
Different passwords should be used for each account or system.
Never save passwords.
Don't share passwords.

3. Protect and Audit Your Digital Assets

Make a list of all equipment and create security policies. It is essential to identify who uses what devices, takes their computers out of the office, and where they are located. Employees should be educated about unsecured WiFi networks. They should also be required to use secure WiFi networks. To prevent anyone from gaining access to your computer, have a plan for when it is lost or stolen. Employees should lock their computers when they leave the office.

Be aware of the dangers associated with USB storage devices. For example, it is dangerous to insert unknown USB drives into company computers. Consider using USB security.

4. Protect Your Cloud-Computing Resources

Most people are well aware of the dangers associated with USB devices. But do you and your employees understand the threat posed by cloud storage and collaboration apps?

PCMag published an article which breaks down CODE42's data exposure report. It revealed that employees could use Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive, Slack and iCloud. While valuable and straightforward, these apps allow for the insecure movement of data outside the company. CODE42 warns that this can lead to "information security teams losing visibility to data and the ability to protect them." Employees may accidentally reveal confidential information to an unsecured cloud location.

This article by InfoSecurity magazine is a great resource. It includes best practices for cloud computing such as "ensure employees understand what services are approved or not, how to secure their services and what data must be stored where and when." You can also consider using a cloud security provider such as Cisco Cloud to provide additional layers of protection.

5. Cybersecurity: Make an investment

Security is a matter of budget. Although some preventive measures, such as procedures and policies, are free, it is essential to invest in many safety solutions. While antivirus software is helpful, it's not enough. Multi-factor authentication and private cloud platforms are options.

While you might be able to provide educational materials for your employees very effectively, sometimes it is better to use outside resources. For example, provide professionally-prepared training materials and courses such as The Security Awareness Company to ensure that your team is proficient in cybersecurity..

6. Stop Email Phishing Victims

Email remains the most common form of communication at work, but it poses a significant security risk, especially as an insider threat. Phishers are getting more sophisticated in designing emails to gather financial, personal and account information. This can be done by attaching a URL or an attachment. These may be familiar to you. They often look normal and are likely to be from someone you trust. You might get an email directing you to claim your prize, a request from your boss or a social media message asking you to change your password.

Education is one of the best ways to prevent phishing attacks. The team can be shown examples of these phishing emails. They must be aware of what a potentially dangerous email looks like. Users will likely find much of the content in suspicious emails if they take the time to examine it. Phishing.org provides more information and advice about what to look out for.

It is impossible to stop phishers from sending emails. You can keep logs of all clicked emails in activity tracker software to help you investigate phishing attempts by employees. And in addition to reporting a phishing attempt to management, the FTC instructs phishing targets to forward it to the FTC at spam@use.gov and the Anti-Phishing Working Group at reportphishing@apwg.org. The phishing attack can be reported at ftc.gov/complaint. If an employee is a victim of phishing attempts

7. Monitor and analyze user behaviour

Understanding how your team works every day is one of the best ways you can prevent accidental data exposure. Analyzing workflows and looking at user activity data can help you identify high-risk behaviours such as unauthorized downloads or browsing unsecured sites. Accident insider threats can be challenging to spot because you don't have any reason to suspect the offender.

Contextual user behaviour monitoring software can help you not only detect dangerous actions but also determine the intent of the user's actions by adding context to the events. ActivTrak offers a way to classify users based on their risky actions automatically. You can coach and explain why their actions could lead to insider threats by providing a list of high-risk users and a log.

Sources:

https://www.activtrak.com/blog/7-ways-you-can-prevent-accidental-insider-threats/