In the ever-evolving cybersecurity landscape, one of the most challenging aspects to address is the threat that comes from within an organization — insider threats. These threats pose significant risks because they involve individuals who have legitimate access to an organization’s systems and data, making them particularly difficult to detect and mitigate.

What is an insider threat?

An insider threat is a security risk that originates from within an organization. This can be an employee, contractor or any trusted individual who has access to sensitive information, systems or networks. Unlike external threats, which come from hackers or cybercriminals outside the organization, insider threats involve individuals who have been granted access and who misuse this access, either intentionally or unintentionally.

Insider threats can be broadly categorized into two types: malicious and accidental.

Malicious insider threats involve individuals who intentionally seek to harm the organization. A malicious insider may steal sensitive data, sabotage systems or leak confidential information for personal gain, revenge or ideological reasons. These individuals often exploit their knowledge of the organization’s security measures to carry out their activities without detection.

Accidental or unintentional insider threats, on the other hand, occur when individuals unintentionally cause harm to the organization. This can happen through negligence, such as clicking on a phishing email, mishandling sensitive data or failing to follow security protocols. While there is no malicious intent, the consequences of such actions can be just as damaging as those caused by malicious insiders.

Who may become an insider threat?

Insider threats can originate from various sources within an organization, including:

• Employees: Current employees are the most common source of insider threats. They have direct access to the organization’s systems and data, making it easier for them to cause harm, whether intentionally or accidentally.
• Contractors: Contractors and third-party vendors often have access to sensitive information and systems as part of their work. If not properly vetted or monitored, they can pose significant risks to the organization.
• Former employees: Even after leaving an organization, former employees may retain access to systems or sensitive information. If their access is not promptly revoked, they could use this to cause harm, especially if they leave on bad terms.
• Business partners: Business partners, such as suppliers or affiliates, may have access to certain systems or data. If they are compromised or act maliciously, they can become an insider threat.
• Privileged users: Individuals with elevated privileges, such as IT administrators or executives, have greater access to critical systems and data. If they misuse their privileges, either maliciously or accidentally, the consequences can be severe.

Types of insider threats

Insider threats can manifest in various forms, depending on the individual’s role within the organization and their motivations. Here are some common types:

• Data theft: Insiders may steal sensitive information, such as intellectual property, customer data or financial information. This data may be sold to competitors, used for personal gain or leaked to the public.
• Sabotage: Some insiders may intentionally damage or disrupt the organization’s systems, networks or data. This could involve deleting critical files, introducing malware or disrupting operations, often as an act of revenge or to damage the organization’s reputation.
• Espionage: In some cases, insiders may be recruited by external entities to spy on the organization. They may gather intelligence on business operations, strategies or technologies and share it with competitors or foreign governments.
• Negligence: Even well-meaning employees can inadvertently cause security breaches. This might include mishandling data, using weak passwords or falling victim to social engineering attacks, which can lead to unauthorized access or data loss.
• Policy violations: Insiders who disregard security policies, whether through ignorance or disregard for the rules, can expose the organization to risks. This includes unauthorized access to systems, sharing credentials or bypassing security protocols.

What is an unintentional insider threat?

An unintentional insider threat refers to a security risk posed by individuals within an organization who, without malicious intent, inadvertently compromise security. These individuals may accidentally expose sensitive information, allow unauthorized access to systems or cause other forms of harm due to negligence, lack of awareness or simple mistakes.

Key characteristics of unintentional insider threats include:

• Human error: Mistakes like sending sensitive information to the wrong recipient, clicking on phishing links or misconfiguring security settings can lead to security breaches.
• Negligence: Failing to follow security protocols, such as using weak passwords, ignoring software updates or improperly handling sensitive data, can expose an organization to threats.
• Social engineering attacks: Employees may be tricked by social engineering tactics, such as phishing emails or phone scams, which can lead to unintentional disclosure of credentials or other critical information.
• Lack of awareness: A lack of training or awareness about cybersecurity risks can cause employees to unknowingly engage in risky behaviors, like using unsecured networks or sharing sensitive information without proper encryption.

While unintentional insider threats lack malicious intent, they can still result in significant damage, including data breaches, financial losses and reputational harm. Addressing these threats typically involves improving employee education and training, implementing strict security policies and using technologies that can detect and prevent errors before they lead to a breach.

What is a malicious insider threat?

A malicious insider threat involves an individual within an organization who intentionally seeks to cause harm, steal data or disrupt operations. These insiders have legitimate access to the organization’s systems, data and networks, which they exploit for personal gain, revenge or other motives.

Key characteristics of malicious insider threats include:

• Intentional harm: Malicious insiders deliberately act to harm the organization. This can include stealing sensitive information, sabotaging systems or leaking confidential data.
• Exploitation of access: Since these individuals have authorized access to critical systems and data, they can bypass many security measures that protect against external threats. Their knowledge of the organization’s infrastructure often makes their actions difficult to detect.
• Varied motivations: Malicious insiders may be motivated by various factors. Financial gain is the top cause of malicious insider activities. Revenge and ideological reasons are the other most common motivators for malicious insiders.
• Long-term planning: Malicious insiders typically carefully plan their actions over time, gradually collecting information or waiting for the right moment to strike.
• Insider espionage: In some cases, insiders may act as spies for competitors, foreign governments or other entities, providing them with intelligence on the organization’s operations, strategies or technologies.

Examples of malicious insider threats include:

• Data theft: An employee downloads sensitive customer data with the intent to sell it on the dark web or to a competitor.
• System sabotage: A disgruntled IT administrator deletes critical files or introduces malware into the company’s network as an act of revenge.
• Intellectual property theft: A researcher copies proprietary information about a new product and shares it with a competing firm.

Malicious insider threats are particularly dangerous because of the trust and access insiders have. Mitigating these threats requires a combination of security measures, such as monitoring user activity, restricting access based on roles and fostering a positive organizational culture to reduce the likelihood of disgruntled employees turning against the company.

Types of insider threats: Collaborator, lone wolf and compromised insider

In the realm of insider threats, the nature of the threat can vary depending on the individual’s motivations, actions and level of involvement. Here’s a closer look at three specific types of insider threats: collaborator, lone wolf and compromised insider.

1. Collaborator

A collaborator is an insider who works with external parties, such as hackers, competitors or other malicious actors, to compromise the organization. The collaborator often provides access, information or other resources to these external entities, enabling them to achieve their malicious objectives.

Motivation: Collaborators may be motivated by financial gain, coercion or ideological alignment with the external party. For instance, they might receive payment for leaking sensitive information or assisting in a cyberattack.

Actions: The collaborator might share login credentials, disable security measures or provide insider knowledge that allows external attackers to bypass defenses. They may also help cover up the tracks of external attackers to avoid detection.

Examples: An employee providing access to a company’s internal systems to a cybercriminal group in exchange for money or a contractor sharing proprietary business strategies with a competitor.

2. Lone wolf

A lone wolf is an insider who acts independently to carry out malicious activities against the organization. Unlike collaborators, lone wolves do not rely on external help; they plan and execute their actions on their own.

Motivation: Lone wolves are often driven by personal grievances, a desire for revenge or a strong ideological belief. They might feel wronged by the organization or they may hold a particular belief that justifies their actions in their minds.

Actions: Lone wolves might steal data, sabotage systems or leak confidential information. Since they operate alone, they typically use their own knowledge and access to carry out these activities, often using their understanding of the organization’s operations to avoid detection.

Examples: A disgruntled employee who deletes critical files to disrupt business operations or an IT admin who installs backdoor software to maintain unauthorized access after leaving the company.

3. Compromised insider

A compromised insider is an individual who is unknowingly manipulated or coerced by external attackers into assisting them. The compromised insider might not have any malicious intent but ends up being used as a tool by the attackers.

Motivation: Compromised insiders are typically unaware of their involvement in malicious activities. They may be tricked, blackmailed or socially engineered into actions that facilitate a security breach.

Actions: A compromised insider might unknowingly grant access to sensitive systems, install malware or share confidential information. This can happen, for example, when an employee falls victim to a phishing attack and unknowingly provides their login credentials to a hacker.

Examples: An employee who is tricked into clicking on a malicious email link that installs ransomware on the company’s network, or an individual who is blackmailed into providing access to secure systems under threat of personal harm.

What is an unintentional insider threat?

Fueled by no malicious or criminal intent, an unintentional or accidental insider threat is caused by employees who do not carefully follow the IT and security guidelines stipulated by their organization. Such insiders are negligent in how they use corporate systems or handle important data, unwittingly placing their company in harm’s way.

Here are the two main reasons unintentional insider threats arise:

Ignorance: Employees who lack the necessary training, experience or judgment in recognizing threats can easily fall prey to scammers who approach them via phishing emails, impersonating upper management or fake websites.

Negligence: Human error, ignoring corporate security policies and protocols, and attempting to cut corners in the workflow can lead to data breaches, among many other cyber-risks, that may further result in expensive ramifications.

Even IT teams can accidentally become insider threats due to negligence, which includes overlooking misconfigurations that open up security holes, missing patches, elevating the wrong people with privileges they shouldn’t have and not enforcing their own policies.

Such unintentional insider threats are usually classified as:

Pawns: Employees who, unbeknownst to them, are manipulated or talked into carrying out malicious activities by external threat actors or scammers are known as pawns. They may accidentally download malware, share important credentials or fall prey to social engineering scams.

Goofs: While these kinds of accidental threat actors do not intend to cause the organization any harm, their actions can be perceived as deliberate and arrogant. Their incompetency to follow the company’s security procedures, such as sharing or storing classified customer information on unauthorized devices, even after being briefed on the consequences of such behaviors, qualifies them to carry this moniker.

What is a malicious insider threat?

A malicious insider threat is any action taken by an existing or former employee, or a threat actor with unauthorized access to an organization’s IT systems, out of self-interest. Here are the most common reasons why an insider intentionally threatens a company:

Financial gain: With privileged access to confidential and business-critical information, a malicious insider can leverage the data and sell it to the highest bidder or even hold it for ransom under an alias. Depending on the quality and kind of information the insider possesses, such attacks can cost companies hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Emotional gain: It’s not uncommon to hear of disgruntled employees bearing ill will against their companies — most often after being laid off. While many go on their way and find new places of employment, some prefer taking revenge. They use the information on hand and access privileges to compromise the organization’s IT security or damage the business’s reputation.

Political gain: Sometimes, insiders seek to gain information that can prove detrimental to the targeted company in more ways than a data breach or regulatory non-compliance would. They seek the information to gain leverage over certain parties within the organization to serve their own agendas.

Insider threat examples

Reading about what an insider threat is and its many kinds is one thing. But to really understand the problem, you need to see it in action. These two real-life examples of insider-related cyber incidents illustrate the ways that something like that can happen.

Unintentional/accidental insider

A configuration error at Japanese Android game studio Ateam led to the exposure of data for about one million people. A Google Drive storage instance was mistakenly set to “Anyone on the internet with the link can view” in March 2017, leaving 1,369 files accessible for over six years. The files contained personal information, including names, email addresses, phone numbers, customer management numbers and device identification numbers. Ateam discovered the error in November 2023.

Malicious insider

In 2024, a former banker at JP Morgan Chase, Peter Persaud, was caught selling customers’ personal information, including account details, for financial gain. This insider threat was motivated by the potential to earn around $180,000 by offering additional accounts, demonstrating the significant risk of insiders exploiting their access for profit.

Are insider threats increasing?

Yes. A new report by Cybersecurity Insiders shows that between 2019 and 2024, the percentage of organizations reporting insider attacks rose from 66% to 76%, highlighting a significant increase in the detection of insider threats.

What is the cost of an insider threat?

Insider actions increase the cost of a data breach significantly. In IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach 2024 report, the average cost of a data breach at $4.45 million. Many factors can impact the cost of a data breach, with some insider actions having a particularly severe impact on costs. A malicious insider attack is the factor that adds the most to the cost of a data breach, boosting costs up to $4.99 million. Phishing, often the result of an accidental insider action, was the second most cost-impacting factor, driving the cost of a data breach up to $4.88 million.

What percent of breaches are due to insiders?

According to the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report 2024, 68% of data breaches involved a non-malicious human element, like a person falling victim to a social engineering attack or making an error. Malicious insiders were at the root of less than 10% of data breaches.

Insider threat indicators

There are many insider threat indicators an organization can be weary of and take necessary precautions to improve its risk management capabilities. Implementing insider threat detection tools and practices can help catch several behavioral patterns and other anomalous activity within the system that indicate potential insider threats.

Here are a few examples of insider threat indicators:

• Unusual work hours: Tracking employees’ working hours can be an excellent place to start. Observe those who stay in the office after their shift has ended and work or access IT systems at odd hours.
• Abnormal behavior: Employees who begin to act out of the ordinary, talk about quitting their jobs or express their dissatisfaction with the company openly can grow to harbor malicious intent.
• Suspicious activity or access attempts: Any staff member going out of their way to carry out unusual tasks outside their designated responsibilities ideally stands out as an indicator. It is more suspicious if they begin requesting access to information or systems that otherwise do not concern them.
• Interpersonal controversy: Caused by any number of stressors in their personal lives, employees that begin to behave aggressively or uncordially toward their peers are a potential malicious threat.
• Organizational policy disagreements: Employees who blatantly showcase a rebellious attitude toward new changes implemented by the management and push back may decide to act against the company’s best interests, becoming malicious insiders.
• Disregard for security measures: In an attempt to complete their work on time or cut corners for convenience, employees may forget to follow the security measures mandated by their company.
• Poor or declining performance: Observing how employees perform their roles can help gauge their commitment to the company.
• Exiting the organization: As with the example of Apple and its 40 ex-employees, those leaving an organization may carry business-critical information for personal gain.

Why is it important to identify insider threats?

Catching an insider threat as quickly as possible can make all the difference when it comes to determining the company’s growth and its workforce’s quality of PII security. One of the most effective ways to avoid potential data breaches, safeguarding IP and securing the IT network revolves around identifying insiders proactively. These are a few best practices a company can implement to avoid an insider threat incident.

• Perform risk assessments: Carrying out frequent risk assessments of your organization’s digital assets, confidential business information and employee data, among several other facets of the business, is the ideal first step in detecting an insider threat.
• Increase visibility: Be forever cautious. Carefully monitor every activity within the scope of your company’s network and discover threats well before they cause any harm.
• Monitor access requests: Keep an eye out for unexpected or unauthorized access attempts and requests by employees who would otherwise never seek such permissions.
• Conduct performance reviews: Know your employees. It is important to carry out routine workforce evaluations to gauge their motivations. Moreover, conducting such reviews helps understand their sentiments toward — or expectations of — the company as well.
• Investigate unusual incidents: Vigilance is key; this cannot be stressed enough. If any activities in your systems seem out of the ordinary, investigate them diligently. Document your findings and create reports for future reference.
• Insider threat awareness training: Here’s the perfect way to avoid unintentional insider threats. Train employees on the dos and don’ts of IT security as effectively as you can. You can additionally educate them on insider threats and how they can be identified to bolster your organization’s security capabilities.
• Utilize an insider threat detection tool: Employ the most effective internal threat detection solutions, like Cyber Hawk, to streamline insider threat detection processes. Discover suspicious activity within your company and its network rapidly. Speed is of the essence.

What is the goal of an effective insider threat program?

At the end of the day, securing organizations and their people from any form of security threat is the objective of insider threat programs. They are built to help companies protect their workforce, grow the business and avoid hefty expenditures in fines or remediation efforts after an attack.

How do insider threat programs detect potential and actual insider threats?

Traditionally, detecting potential insider threats required both manual and digital efforts. More recently, however, internal threat detection solutions come equipped with the latest cybersecurity technology and machine learning capabilities to identify irregular or deviant activities. They are extremely quick to distinguish between a potential and an actual threat and automatically begin notifying the concerned security professionals with complete details on the nature of the threat to resolve the issue safely.

Implementing an insider threat detection and alerting system

Now that you understand the dangers of insider threats, the next step is to ensure you do everything you can to stay vigilant and safeguard your organization against insiders of all kinds. You can begin by deploying an insider threat detection and alerting tool.

Cyber Hawk can be used to address these issues. Cyber Hawk finds unplanned, unauthorized and malicious network changes that represent potential threats. It sends you alerts to ensure the integrity, security and stability your network.

Cyber Hawk is extremely affordable and can be set up to run with minimal training. Once operational, the system will perform a daily scan automatically and report back with an alert that can be sent to anyone via email or displayed on an online threat management dashboard.

What’s more, the system gets smarter over time. It tracks each end user to establish trends and benchmarks for their individual behaviors and will sound the alarm when suspicious anomalies are detected. The system also includes smart tags, allowing IT professionals managing the tool to easily stop any false positive alerts from repeating.

Learn more about Cyber Hawk today and make internal threat management a breeze.