As the technology advances the breakthrough, like the insider threats. Security becomes one of the biggest concerns for any organization. That is why the cyber security tips also need to be side by side with the technology’s advantages and of course with the events that happen. An insider threat can be best defined as a malicious hacker who could be an employee or officer of a business, institution or agency.
These insider threats can also be some outsiders who can just pretend to be the employee of the company. Getting an access to the information center is the prime motive of these threats. Enterprise information leakage can result into the big business damage. The disgruntled employees can introduce virus, worms and Trojan horses to tamper the corporate secrets. Here are 11 tips for spotting the insider threat. Please have a look:
How to Stop Insider Threat?
If you observe a strange pattern in your DNS traffic
Domain Name Servers are similar to that of the phone book. The server maintains the directory of the domain name and translate them to Internet Protocol. When there is a visitor to your domain, the DNS settings control which company’s server will it reach.
The Domain Name Servers are to simplify the human readable host names to the machine readable IP address. In other words, DNS is a service that translates the domain name to the IP address. But in case, you observe a change in the domain name like inclusion of unnecessary hash (#), it seems something is surely going wrong.
Analyze the Malware before you delete it
The companies always keep a check on the virus and malware attacks. As soon as they identify the infected systems, they work to get these back on track. If you think that any enterprise computer system is infected with the Malware do not simply delete it. However, we still do not have a complete solution to kill the Malware, it should be identified as the beginning of the problems. But, it is better to be well aware of the signs which may cause the threat, right? Knowing the internet security tips helps a lot.
The company should also identify what was done just before the Malware was detected and after what did the employees clicked.
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Check the use of Shadow IT tools
Shadow IT tools are the information technology systems and solutions built/used inside the organization without the organizational approval. The management needs to deploy the resources to find out from where does this stealth IT arises. The use of shadow IT tools has increased exponentially in the recent years.
This growth is the result of the quality of consumer applications in the Cloud such as file sharing apps, social media and collaboration tools. But in the recent application usage and threat report , it was identifiable that some of the organizations have had few remote access applications in use concurrently.
Now you cannot always trust that this usage is unintentional that may lead to severe consequences.
Locate the first instance of any strange/new event
In the recent past, few companies have experienced the insider attack. The new identities, ghost employers’ id was created by using the aliases. These identities were observed to have conducted the new activities which never happened earlier. This was a point of contention. It had resulted in the loss of company data and information.
For Example: An employee changed his job from one semi-conductor manufacturing company to the newer one. He used his remaining time at the old company to download about 80 documents from his new employer’s competitors. The authority catches him when he started emailing these documents to his friends.
Trace the endpoint authentication logs with Active Directory Logs
A very easy trace point where if any employee logs into an unauthorized domain, then there are chances that he could be an insider threat. Keep a track on the endpoint authentication logs.
The company may also monitor the correlation between the logs from Active Directory and the end point authentication events.
Find out what does not exist anymore
It is a general trend that the insider will often try to accomplish the damage by deleting the things, data and important information. They can do it with the use of the Malwares.
You should trace the registry keys, services and other things that exists but no longer visible on the machine. This is a serious telltale sign that the insider could have attacked.
Alarm! Fake Credentials Usage
The insider threat will find the new credentials to find out more on the new found privilege to access the data. They will then set up the bogus credentials and fake files as a bait, you can see when those credentials are in use.
For Example: In the recent past, an unknown outsider had used the fake credential of the retail chain employee. He had then stolen the card numbers of the 40 million customers and personal details of about 70 million customers. This damaged the company’s reputation, leading to the loss of the CEO’s and the CIO’s job.
The insiders can be more dangerous as they have an easy access to the company’s important information.
For Example: The US city recently got locked in the labor negotiation with the union employees. Two of the employees gained control of the system as per the information. Once in the system, they disconnected signal control boxes and refrained any one else to access it. This insider attack lead to four days blinking of light.
Know the multiple logins to the cloud-based storage service
You should look for the multiple logins into different machines, although from the same account, accessing large data stores on the system and synchronizing everything to the cloud based applications like Dropbox or others.
The impact of the cloud based insider attack can be significant. It can affect all the cloud users. An insider can use the authorized rights of the cloud provider to access the sensitive data. It can result into the data leakage and severe destruction to the company’s data.
Watch the flow of data around the key assets
If you regularly monitor the internal assets, you can identify the insider easily. They will try to capture the large amount of data in the shortest time possible.
Verify the exposed employee’s credentials
Some of the paste sites can be checking for the employee credentials. If you find that it is out, immediately change the password and implement the two-factor authentication.
Host-to-host authentication
If a strange person authenticate to a host from a different host even when the target host is authenticates to the domain controller only, it seems there is a serious problem.
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