Insider Threats are often behind the biggest breaches today. This year’s Verizon DBIR reports that 34% of breaches involve internal actors. Moreover, privilege misuse and error by insiders account for 30 percent of breaches, highlighting the reality that Insider Threats can be either malicious or simple user error.
People are, unfortunately, often the weakest link in the cyber security chain, whether their actions are intentional or not. The same people who have legitimate access to your facilities, systems, people, and data often pose the greatest threat—and the effects can be very costly.
What it Takes to Build an Insider Threat Management Program
But while the threat of insider-caused organizational harm is on the rise, most companies have not established a formal program to manage this risk. There may be existing procedures in place to monitor corporate networks for intrusions and the collection of various logs for network analysis, but at many organizations there are few, if any, controls designed to monitor and respond effectively to insider behavior, especially unintentional threats. Moreover, few corporations have implemented holistic Insider Threat Management Programs.
Unfortunately, today’s piecemeal and ad hoc approach is simply not working. Most organizations, especially mid-sized and larger organizations need a holistic Insider Threat Management Program (ITMP) in place to effectively manage these threats and reduce the risk to corporate assets.
An Insider Threat Management Program is often viewed as an expensive and resource intensive endeavor, as well as a privacy nightmare. And yes—this can be true. But while tooling, support and operation expenses, legal and consultant fees, can add up, costs can be reduced by using existing capabilities and resources.
In fact, most companies have existing departments that either share the objectives of a program or are currently responsible for performing some of the functions. One of the keys to success is to leverage and use these existing resources and processes to reduce Insider Threats.
Tapping into an Expert Resource on Insider Threat Management
Shawn Thompson of the Insider Threat Management Group worked with our own Mayank Choudhary, SVP of Strategy at Proofpoint, on a detailed, long-form resource that will provide a guide to building your own Insider Threat Management Program. Between the two experts, they have worked with countless organizations, of varying sizes and across industries, to take existing capabilities and dial them up to the level necessary to meet the ongoing challenge of Insider Threats.
This guide covers:
- The size of the Insider Threat problem today
- How to build on and improve your cybersecurity culture
- What it takes to balance privacy and security
- Legal considerations every company should be aware of
- How to gain buy-in for an Insider Threat Management Program
The guide also offers pages and pages of detailed plans and templates that you can use at your own organization to get your Insider Threat Management Program off the ground or level it up if it already exists. It’s a killer resource, and we’re thrilled to be able to offer it to you.
Ready to dive in?
Download the Guide here:
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