Defending against insider threats
Insider threat training
To defend against the rise of internal fraud, organisations are conducting insider threat awareness security training. Every organisation should be aware of these dangers and act before it’s too late.
Implementing insider threat security training helps your employees identify the common threats that come from inside your organisation, enabling them to better recognise suspicious behaviour and mitigate risk when it arises.
For effective insider threat awareness security training, businesses should include:
- Defining what an insider threat is
- The different types of insider threats
- What techniques and tactics are used by malicious insiders
- How to spot malicious behaviour
- How to report a suspicious individual
- Insider threat simulations
- Learning about data security on devices and networks
- Why user privileges and permissions are important
- Policies around threat mitigation
To achieve a significant uplift in your organisation’s resilience against potential insider threats, the training program must be personalised and interactive. Such training will give the staff confidence to identify potential threats, as well as the ability to make critical decisions in the event of any suspected internal fraud.
Establishing policies & procedures
Although there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to creating a fraud-resistant policy, having a clear outline of your prevention, detection, protection, response and recovery policy is essential. The Commonwealth Fraud Prevention Centre provides several warning signs to be mindful of when putting together a fraud prevention policy.
Businesses should start by clearly defining which stakeholders should collaborate to identify critical assets, security risk indicators, data sources, compliance requirements, privacy implications, communication protocols & training curriculums.
A comprehensive insider fraud mitigation policy must outline the following:
- Definitions of an insider threat, unauthorised disclosure, classified information
- Asset management and governance
- Employee training and awareness
- Cloud data protection
- Prevention and detection processes
- Data security controls
- Situation analysis and mitigation
- Incident response service
- Threat reports
Another effective solution is ensuring Segregation of Duties policies are adhered to in your Accounts Payable functions.
Managing accounts & assign user roles
Another way to combat insider threats is through the use of user roles and managing access to sensitive data.
In every business, you must have assigned roles where appointed managers have a responsibility for managing their team’s access to sensitive information and account privileges. Restricting privileges should be implemented at both an executive and employee level. Privileges can be managed by using a user-role model or role-based access management.
For example, an AP clerk may have access to low-level supplier data and reports. Whereas, the CFO will have access to all levels of supplier management data, reporting, customer setup, and more.
By implementing management procedures with documented and segregated requests and authorisations, you minimise the risk of internal threats.
Source: Cloudflare
Implementing password best practices
Every organisation should protect its network and work devices with strong, secure passwords. If your data is not adequately protected, an insider could corrupt company data as a pretext for committing fraud.
In some cases, an employee might take advantage of exposed passwords in the office, guessing weak passwords or accessing data after they depart the business.
The following password best practices can help ensure no data is stolen or corrupted:
- Create strong passwords that involve a combination of numbers, special characters, lower and upper case letters
- Change passwords regularly – every 2-3 months is recommended
- Set passwords to expire if they are not changed
- Implement a procedure whenever an employee or user leaves the organisation (network access should be removed immediately)
- For shared passwords, store passwords in a third-party password toll or secure password-protected location
- Implement multi-factor authentication
Operating your business in a secure online environment will allow you to keep customer information private and meet legal obligations. In addition, it’s critical to monitor all changes and restrict user access to certain applications.
The ACSC has step-by-step guides on implementing security protections for different devices and applications.
How can Eftsure help?
The longer an insider threat goes undetected, the harder it is to investigate an incident.
Threat detection can be a challenging process without the right processes in place. An insider can not only be motivated to act against your business but also coerce a third-party supplier or ex-employee.
That’s why you must implement defences and preventative measures.
With Eftsure, you can identify and stop payments to fraudulent bank accounts or illegitimate third parties. When processing an EFT payment, you are notified in real-time with a ‘red-thumb’ or ‘orange-thumb’ if there is any discrepancy between the Account Name, BSB or Account Number.
You can investigate transactions more carefully before verifying payments, allowing you to safeguard your financial assets from vulnerabilities from malicious insider threats or third-party access.
To learn more about Eftsure and how we can help your organisation stay protected, contact us today.
It's the critical information you need to stay one step ahead of cyber criminals and prevent your organisation becoming a victim.
