The threat within: Protecting information assets from well-meaning employees

Most information security experts will agree that employees form the weakest link when it comes to corporate information security. Malicious insiders aside, well-intentioned employees bear responsibility for a large number of breaches today. Whether it’s a phishing scam, a lost USB or mobile device that bears sensitive data, a social engineering attack or downloading unauthorized software, unsophisticated but otherwise well-meaning insiders have the potential of unknowingly opening company networks to costly attacks.

These types of internal threats can be particularly hard to detect especially if a company has placed most of its efforts on shoring up external security. For instance, some cyber gangs in Eastern Europe have come up with a pretty clever method to swindle money from small US companies. They send targeted Phishing emails to the company’s treasurer that contains a link which, when opened, installs malicious software that harvests account passwords. Using this information, the criminals initiate wire transfers in small enough amounts to avoid triggering anti money laundering procedures. In cases like these, traditional defenses (firewalls, anti-virus etc) prove to be useless as legitimate accounts are used to commit fraud. This story is not uncommon. In a study conducted by Ponemon Institute earlier this year, it was found that over 88% of data breaches were caused by employee based negligence. In another survey of over 400 business technology professionals by Information Week Analytics, a majority of respondents stated that locking down inside nodes was just as vital as perimeter security.


Employees, the weakest link

Let’s take a look at some of the easy ways that employees can compromise a company’s confidential data without really meaning to.

Social engineering attacks – In its basic form, this refers to hackers manipulating employees out of their usernames and passwords to get access to confidential data. They typically do this by tracking down detailed information that can be used to gain the trust of the employee. With the growing popularity of social networking sites, and the amount of seemingly innocent data that a typical employee shares on these sites, this information is not hard to track down for the resourceful hacker. Email addresses, job titles, work-related discussions, nicknames, all can provide valuable information to launch targeted phishing attacks or trick emails that lead an unsuspecting employee to hand over account information to a hacker posing as a trusted resource. Once the account information has been obtained hackers can penetrate perimeter defense systems.

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