Developing Incident Response Plans for Insider Threats

In today’s digital world, businesses face a growing danger that goes beyond threats from outside their company and includes weaknesses inside their walls. Internal threats, which can come from current or past employees, contractors, or coworkers, pose a major threat to the privacy of an organization’s data, intellectual property, and reputation. 

To effectively combat these threats, organizations must carefully create strong incident response plans that are specifically made to deal with insider threats. In this blog post, we’ll discuss five important aspects that you should think about when making incident reaction plans to deal with insider threats.

Find Different Types of Insider Threats

Understanding the complicated web of insider threats is the first step in coming up with a strong incident reaction plan. This type of threat can cause a wide range of issues, from accidental data breaches to outright crimes.

In order to effectively stop these dangerous intrusions, businesses should divide insider threat profiles into three main levels:

• Careless insiders. These people put security at risk by making mistakes they don’t mean to. They might have broken the law by clicking on fake emails without thinking or messing up how their system is set up. 

• Malicious insiders. These insiders have bad intentions for the company, which are usually based on personal or professional grudges. They might steal data on purpose, do acts of subversion, or other malicious acts.

• Malicious outsiders and insiders. These people work together to bring down the company and are the biggest threat. They often know a lot about security procedures and may be involved in cyberespionage, secret data theft, or selling private information to outside parties without permission.

Figuring out these archetypes in a company makes it easier to create incident response plans that work well against certain threats. To do just that, companies can leverage cutting-edge security tools that notify them through inside threat indicators or ping them when a malicious attack takes place.

Create a List of Signs of an Insider Threat

The creation of a list of signs that point to insider threats is very important for finding them early and then taking steps to stop them. Strange changes in network activity, unusual access patterns, changes in behavior patterns, or unauthorized data forays are some of these signs. 

A complete list of warning signs that could point to insider threats should be made. Also, making sure that the security staff knows how to spot these warning signs and act on them right away is very important.

Set Up Systems for Monitoring and Logging

Organizations need to set up thorough and vigilant tracking and logging systems to find and stop insider threats. These systems need to carefully record what people do and how they act as they move through networks, applications, and systems. 

It is important to look over these logs regularly so that potential insider threats can be found early on before they become existential problems. Automated alerts can also be set up to quickly let security staff know about strange events happening in real time.

Make a Plan for How to Handle Incidents Involving Insider Threats

A carefully thought-out incident reaction plan, specifically made to deal with insider threats, should lay out clear steps that can be used to deal with different types of threats. The blueprint should include a wide range of steps, such as initial discovery, containment, eradication, recovery, and learning from the experience. 

The main parts of the plan should include the following:

• Putting systems or accounts that have been hacked into quarantine;
• Using methodical investigation procedures to find the intruder;
• Thinking about the law and working with law enforcement when needed;
• Coming up with a way to communicate with both internal and external stakeholders;
• An action plan for reducing damage and getting back to normal operations.

Develop Programs to Teach People About and Protect Against Insider Threats

A key part of any insider threat response strategy is making sure that everyone in the organization is aware of possible dangers and can report anything that seems fishy. 

Regular programs for training and raising knowledge should include:

• The publication of best practices for data security;
• The ability to recognize and report signs of insider threats; 
• A description of the consequences of insider threats; 
• The formalization of policies and processes for whistleblowers.

Conclusion

With over 2,200 cyberattacks per day, it’s important to come up with an incident reaction plan that is specifically designed to deal with insider threats. Understanding the different types of insider threats, setting up warning signs, putting in place reliable monitoring and logging systems, making a very detailed response plan, and making employees aware of the risks, all work together to protect companies from the unique problems that insider threats can cause. 

Entities can successfully reduce the risks that come from insider threats and protect their valuable assets by using proactive strategies that include prevention, detection, and response.