An insider threat is a malicious threat to an organization that comes from people within the organization, such as employees, former employees, contractors or business associates, who have inside information concerning the organization’s security practices, data and computer systems. The threat may involve fraud, the theft of confidential or commercially valuable information, the theft of intellectual property, or the sabotage of computer systems.
The insider threat has posed significant challenges to US DOD from millions of documents unearthed by former contractor Edward Snowden to recent breach where sensitive personal data of tens of millions of federal employees has been lifted that not only puts individuals at risk, but compromises certain operational practices of the U.S. military/intelligence complex.
Market research company Forrester report found,”U.S. organisations suffered $40 billion in losses due to employee theft and fraud.” ” 46% of nearly 200 technology decision-makers reported internal incidents as the most common cause of the breaches they experienced in the past year,” writes Chloe Green in Information Age article.
Organizations and Intelligence agencies are now using User Behavior Analytics or UBA to detect when legitimate user accounts/identities have been compromised by external attackers or are being abused by insiders for malicious purposes. DARPA, earlier had launched a program known as Cyber Insider Threat (CINDER) that proposed to monitor the “keystrokes, mouse movements, and visual cues” of insider threats.
The National Security Agency has significantly enhanced its capabilities for detecting cyber-threats in the two-plus years since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden pilfered and disclosed classified information. The multi-layered capabilities, which include user behavior analytics, now protect a private cloud that provides storage, computing and operational analytics to the intelligence community, told CIO Greg Smithberger.
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