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6 Types of Insiders that Could Be Working for You

  • 6 Types of Insiders that Could Be Working for You-

    The Compromised Consultant (Code and Intellectual Property Thief)

    Your trusted consultant gets into financial trouble after losing a large amount of money. This consultant is targeted by an organized crime network because of his technical position of trust, which is publicly accessible via their LinkedIn profile. The blackmailer may pose as a technical recruiter and convince that person to steal sensitive PII information that can be sold through the black market. After your consultant finds vulnerable information to exploit, he will become more confident and aggressive about stealing information. Eventually he will become sloppy and prepare to resign to avoid being caught.

    Indicators: May exhibit signs of financial instability (i.e., gambling) outside of work environment, abnormally high level of downloads or copies of documents not associated with role or department.

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6 Types of Insiders that Could Be Working for You

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  • 6 Types of Insiders that Could Be Working for You-5

    The Compromised Consultant (Code and Intellectual Property Thief)

    Your trusted consultant gets into financial trouble after losing a large amount of money. This consultant is targeted by an organized crime network because of his technical position of trust, which is publicly accessible via their LinkedIn profile. The blackmailer may pose as a technical recruiter and convince that person to steal sensitive PII information that can be sold through the black market. After your consultant finds vulnerable information to exploit, he will become more confident and aggressive about stealing information. Eventually he will become sloppy and prepare to resign to avoid being caught.

    Indicators: May exhibit signs of financial instability (i.e., gambling) outside of work environment, abnormally high level of downloads or copies of documents not associated with role or department.

Insider threats are the underappreciated threat. They fly under the radar as stories about hackers get top billing. Insider attacks are more insidious because they betray the trust the company has in its employees, partners and systems. Insider threats are the hardest to detect and take longer to discover than any other threats, according to the most recent Verizon Data Breach Report. Insider threats range across types and include: intentional data theft as in the Morgan Stanley breach; possible insider trading, like that recently seen in the LinkedIn acquisition; garden variety employee mistakes, such as the Google insider data breach; and ex-employees accused of taking trade secrets, as alleged in an IBM lawsuit. And then there are the active efforts by criminals to recruit insiders on the Dark Web or nation-state espionage that takes the form of phishing emails or bribed insiders.

The insider threat is not really a cybersecurity problem or a data analytics issue; it's a human risk problem that can only be solved by understanding how people think and behave. In this slideshow, RedOwl has applied the science of risk assessment to employee behavior and come up with six persona types of employees who represent insider threat risks.