Cyber Defense eMagazine May 2019

Enterprise Insider Threats on The Rise
New report finds 59 percent of organizations have experienced at least one insider attack in the last 12
months
By Rich Campagna, CMO, Bitglass
With news of hacking incidents, new strains of malware, and other alarming external cyberattacks, many
organizations can overlook the importance of remediating insider threats. Comprised of both negligent
and malicious employee behaviors, these threats pose a legitimate danger to enterprise security. To learn
more about the state of insider threats and what organizations are doing to defend against them, Bitglass
partnered with a leading cybersecurity community to survey IT professionals. The results, captured in the
2019 Insider Threat Report, revealed that insider attacks are on the rise. Unfortunately, they also showed
that most organizations don’t have the proper security controls in place to identify and defend against
these harmful attacks which can stem from employees, partners, or other internal stakeholders.
In the survey, 73 percent of all respondents said that insider attacks have become more frequent over
the past 12 months; 59 percent said that their organization has been victim to at least one over the same
timeframe. These numbers are significantly higher since the last time Bitglass conducted this survey in
2017. While this is likely due to a multitude of factors, two key themes did seem to emerge from the
research. The first is data moving off premises, and the second is the fact that companies often fail to
secure their data in the growing number of devices and applications that access and store corporate
information.
The rapid adoption of the cloud and bring your own device (BYOD) means that data is no longer kept
safe behind on-premises firewalls and other traditional security tools. In fact, in separate studies, Bitglass
found that 81 percent of organizations around the world now use cloud apps, and that 85 percent of
organizations now enable BYOD. These numbers indicate that companies are embracing new
technologies that offer numerous benefits; for example, greater cost savings, improved productivity, and
more collaboration, as well as enhanced employee satisfaction and retention. However, this fundamental
shift in where and how data is stored, used, and shared demands a different approach to security.
Unfortunately, Bitglass’ latest research suggests that many companies are failing to adapt accordingly.
The first issue uncovered in the report lies with the monitoring and detection of insider threats. 56 percent
of organizations said that it is more difficult to detect insider threats after migrating to the cloud. Despite
this, 41 percent claimed that their organizations don’t monitor for abnormal user behavior across their
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