It may surprise you to know that a wide number of cyber-attacks are perpetrated by insiders, and it has been estimated that about 60% of all businesses were the victim of an insider cyber-attack last year. The worst news is that too many businesses spend most of their efforts on safeguarding their systems from risks on the outside, when the threat might be lurking right in their midst. But to stop insider attacks, companies must not only have the proper barriers in place, but target the human factors that could trigger such attacks as well. Here are a few things you can do to prevent cyber-attacks.
Protect the Most Important Information First
When building your plan, you have to assess what is the single most important information your company has to protect. This is where you should put the most attention. You should take the steps necessary to protect this information by using multi-level authentication, and even consider using biometric technology. Cards and passwords aren’t enough.
Sense Trouble Brewing
You should also keep your ears open and know if there might be some issues between you and other employees, or a lone or group of employees that might be disgruntled. This is especially important if those people have passes. You should have an anonymous reporting system in place, and be particularly vigilant when there are major issues affecting the company, such as mergers or layoffs.
Take Previous Attacks as a Lesson
Whatever you do, you cannot safeguard your information 100%, so you have to at least learn from past mistakes and make corrections. In one case, a company was the victim of an insider cyber-attack when the employee used their access to steal the company’s trading algorithms. The company was then able to make adjustments, and caught another employee later on.
What to Do if You Were the Victim of a Suspected Attack
If you think you may have been a victim of an attack, there are plenty of things that you can do. For instance, you can check your log and see if a certain user has been trying to access data that they shouldn’t, or downloaded unusually large amounts of data.
But there are cases when it’s more complicated and you will have to work with experts. If you’re located in Cleveland, computer forensics Cleveland companies like Secure Data Recovery will be able to help you trace down the culprit by performing mobile, digital, and computer forensics. They’ll also be able to help you with stolen intellectual property issues. This is your only chance to hopefully stop the breach and find the person responsible so you can follow up with legal action and do some damage control as well.
Cyber-attacks cannot be taken lightly, but an insider cyber-attack can be even more deadly. So, make sure that you do everything in your power to protect your data at all levels, and focus on any suspicious or at-risk activity within your organization if you want to remain compliant and avoid legal repercussions.
