Human activity inside our network, also called “Insider threats,” can be a deceiving, yet consistently true and appropriate label.
After all, they are indeed on the “inside” -- they know other employees, the company’s products, services, buildings, tools, vendors, partners, etc. But unlike the names of nefarious deeds that use the same introductory word, such as “insider trading,” they’re not necessarily intending to do anything wrong whatsoever. It’s often quite the opposite. Insider threats can be model employees who are dedicated to their job, enthusiastic and often stand as a core asset for the organization. However, they can also create headaches and much, much worse.
A recently released report from Forrester determined that 58 percent of “sensitive data security incidents are caused by insider threats.” And regardless of whether that “insider” has good or bad intentions, it remains one of the most obvious liabilities throughout any organization. And those, in most cases, include users that don’t intend to conduct any malicious activity. Why then, are cybersecurity solutions not finding identity-related threats that so clearly serve as the entry point for cybercriminals? Traditional cybersecurity tools are nearly all deterministic – they look at activity as well as logs, events and predictable manners. They also look at exceptions to those predictable manners. But that’s it.
Because people are innately unpredictable, they can download and install new software on devices, sign up, cancel, change, hide or share things at will. A lot of things are even created outside of an organization’s policies. In many cases, it can be something as simple as a demo account created and used by an admin or developer that’s employed during the normal course of their duties – and it’s simply forgotten about or otherwise no longer important to anyone. Additionally, humans can change their passwords, use new services, introduce new machines, etc. The list goes on and on.
To discover and remediate such activities, there must be an automated process for continually looking at ALL activity traffic and continuously discover and remediate the identity risk such changes might raise. AuthMind introduces a new approach to the cybersecurity industry by having eyes on all traffic and activity – as that’s the only way to know if something has changed for a good, bad or unknown reason.
Organizations need to be on top of actual identities’ activities across the organization to understand that those things happen. By deploying AuthMind alongside existing security investments, organizations can automatically focus on data models that discover where such human changes can lead to identity exposure.
One simple yet powerful example of how traditional cybersecurity and/or identity management vendors don’t catch hackers if those are simulating a “normal” user activity. They’ll make themselves appear to be accessing systems from an acceptable location, and at acceptable time. AuthMind looks at actual activity & traffic and discovers identity risks. This is the only chance to have the greatest possible visibility. AuthMind will raise the flag ahead of time.
Human activity can cause an insider threat that is arguably the scariest because they can affect an organization regardless of whether it’s initiated via a seemingly meaningless act or concerted vengeance. Contact AuthMind to schedule a demo for your organization.
