Number of insider security breaches up 72%

Ensuring visibility is a challenge for all businesses when it comes to data access control. The explosion of data, IoT, remote work, and complex supply chains have made it even more difficult. Ensuring information is accessible to only those who need it requires extensive mapping and control.

But what about the ‘Insider’ threat? Even though human error is the leading cause of most of security breaches, there are also more malicious attacks to watch out for from unhappy or former employees, or employees more susceptible to being compromised by an attacker.

According to the 2022 Insider Risk Report the number of insider threat incidents is up by a whopping 72% on last year. As many as 42% of these incidents were related to IP and data theft.

75% of investigations that led to criminal prosecutions occurred from home, reinforcing the importance of increased data access control for remote working. Data loss connected with users taking screenshots during online meetings has increased by over 200% year-over-year.

32% of malicious insider incidents included sophisticated tactics, such as burner email accounts and ATT&CK techniques.

Peter Bradley of Torsion says: “The volume and complexity of information and ‘who has access to what’ is far too great for any IT team to manage or control. Automation is required to monitor, control and identify any abnormal or risky behaviour.  Torsion provides this level of security by alerting the owner of the file or folder if any access doesn’t look right, so they can assess the risk factor. It can also automatically shut down or revoke access according to the security settings of a particular organisation. With such technology, insider threats, whether through error or malicious, can be minimised.”