No one likes to imagine that an employee or trusted third party could pose an insider threat—but addressing these risks before they escalate into full-blown attacks is critical.
An insider threat is a malicious or negligent individual who becomes a security risk because they have legitimate access to internal systems and data—and misuse that access.
Cybersecurity risks don’t always come from external actors. Insider threats are unique because they originate from within the organization, whether through intentional wrongdoing or simple human error. This creates a paradox: the people who are your greatest assets can also become your biggest vulnerabilities.
What makes insider threats particularly dangerous is their familiarity with the company’s operations. They know the processes, the systems, and often the weak points—giving them an advantage that external attackers rarely have.
The numbers speak for themselves. According to the 2022 Ponemon Cost of Insider Threats Global Report, insider threats have surged by 44% in just two years. Even more alarming, the average cost per incident has skyrocketed to $15.38 million, nearly one-third higher than before.
Who or What Is an Insider?
As its name implies, insider threats arise from users who have legitimate access to an organization’s resources. This often includes information, equipment devices, personnel facilities, network, and system access.
Most often than not, this person is usually an employee, but they can also be a third-party contractor or vendor. In short, anyone who works directly with an organization can pose the risk of being an insider threat.
Examples of Insider Threats
- Contractors, vendors, or partners who have been issued badges or access devices to enter facilities or systems.
- Trusted employees with privileged access to sensitive information, granted based on their role or responsibilities.
- Individuals with network or computer access, even if their permissions are limited.
- Former employees—terminated or resigned—who still have active credentials or enabled profiles.
- High-privilege users, such as programmers or developers, who can access data through staging areas or development environments.
- Vendors or contractors with exclusive knowledge of an organization’s operations, business strategies, or goals, often gained through providing products or services or having privileged access.
- Government officials or personnel with access to classified information that could have national security implications if compromised.
Types of Insider Threats
Insider threats can come from anyone and from any level of the organization. However, those who perpetrate it successfully often have high-privilege access to data. Insider threats can be divided into two categories based on the intent: those that pose a risk unwittingly and those intentionally being malicious.
1. The careless insider: This activity borders on negligence when the insider unwittingly exposes the organization to outsider threats. These are often the result of unintentional mistakes, the most common of which are falling for phishing attacks or scams that infect the system with malware. Others include leaving misconfigured databases, poor administrative credentials, and improperly disposing of sensitive company documents.
- The pawn: These are the unknowing group of insiders that have been manipulated and deceived to harm the organization. They are individuals who fall prey to social engineering or email spear-phishing attacks that make them give up their login credentials or click on harmful links that download malicious payloads.
- The goof: These are insiders who put companies at risk due to their frivolity born out of incompetence, ignorance, or carelessness.
2. The mole: This individual is an imposter who nefariously gains insider status. This person might pose as a vendor, partner, or employee to gain privileged access to the company’s network or premises.
3. The malicious insider: Malicious insiders are the most dangerous category of insider threats. These are often employees, but they can also be contractors, vendors, or partners. They intentionally try to harm their organization by abusing their position either through malicious exploitation, stealing information, misusing data, abusing credentials, destroying data, and/or compromising networks.
- The collaborator: A subset of the malicious insider is the person who collaborates with outsiders to commit an insider crime. They can partner with their company’s competitors, organized crime groups, or even nation-states. The objective could be to steal customer information, personally identifiable information, trade secrets, business operations, and intellectual property.
- The lone wolf: These are independent actors who aren’t actively influenced, supported, or controlled by any external parties. These categories of malicious actors are usually dangerous because they are often highly motivated and singularly driven in the pursuit of their goal(s). Because they are confident, they can pull off their nefarious acts alone; they are individuals who often have elevated privileges and high levels of access, such as systems administrators.
Why Insider Threats Occur
Most employees don’t join an organization intending to cause harm. However, over time, factors like greed, personal grievances, or a desire for revenge can turn a trusted individual into a malicious actor.
Intentional insider threats often manifest as sabotage, espionage, corruption, or theft, and these acts are frequently carried out through hostile cyber activities.
Beyond malicious intent, broader trends have increased the likelihood of insider threats. The growing emphasis on information sharing and the widespread distribution of sensitive data means more individuals have access to critical information—creating more opportunities for misuse.
Insider threats are notoriously difficult to detect. They often operate in secrecy and can persist for years without raising alarms.
Consider this example: Desjardins Group, a Canadian financial company, faced a $201 million class-action settlement after a malicious insider exploited a flawed process. For over two years, the insider copied customer data from a shared drive—intended for internal convenience—without detection. Ultimately, 9.7 million records were exposed, highlighting how seemingly minor oversights can lead to catastrophic breaches.
How Can I Detect Malicious Insiders?
There are no foolproof ways to detect who has the potential of becoming an insider threat to your organization. But insider threat prevention requires marshaling resources to detect the elements that indicate an insider threat is likely imminent or possible.
People as sensors
People are the first line of defense, especially in the identification and detection of potential insider threats in their fellow colleagues. Employees are more prone to carry out attacks against their employers when they are under a series of stressors. This pressure and stress can make them careless on the job and even grow to become disgruntled employees. Thus, they became prime targets and vulnerable to criminals and foreign agents.
Therefore, it would behoove employers to be on the alert for employees or insiders who exhibit certain concerning behaviors. Detecting and addressing these concerning behaviors early, then providing help, can make the difference between a loyal employee and an insider that commits a harmful act.
Monitoring insider activity
In addition to human observation and sensors, technology can also be used to detect vulnerabilities in the system that indicate the potential presence of an insider threat. For instance, if an employee seeks access to documents that have nothing to do with their job function or roles, then the system should be able to flag such activity.
Insider steps toward malicious activity
Stress may be a contributing factor to an insider threat, but it’s disingenuous to blame it alone for destructive and disruptive acts of sabotage. Those who study insider threats emphasize that its rarely spontaneous, but rather an evolution that moves through several critical pathways:
- Grievance and ideation: The disgruntled individual invariably voices their displeasure and anger through speech, writings, and/or disruptive actions.
- Preparation: This is the initial composition stage where the individual starts engaging in research and putting a plan in motion to harm the organization.
- Exploration: This represents a tipping point in the escalation as the insider starts to actively recruit others into the potential criminal activity.
- Experimentation: The individual starts to scope out a plan of action and figure out potential roadblocks they might encounter through reconnaissance, testing, and surveillance.
- Execution: The nefarious plan is implemented, and the insider takes advantage of their access to commit a hostile act.
- Escape: The insider performs exfiltration to remove sensitive data while attempting to cover up their tracks to evade detection.
Who Is at Risk of Becoming an Insider Threat?
It’s essential to identify threat indicators. This helps an organization understand those who are potentially at greater risk of becoming threats. One way to do so is by categorizing potential risk indicators:
- Personal indicators: This represents a combination of personal stressors and predispositions currently impacting an individual.
- Behavioral indicators: These are actions and attitudes observed by the person’s co-workers, peers, and supervisors. These behavioral indicators constitute a baseline of behavior, which deviated from, arouse the suspicion of others that something is amiss.
- Environmental indicators: An organization’s culture, environment, and policies can either contribute, hinder, or curtail an insider threat.
- Technical indicators: This encompasses a host of system activities that generally require IT systems tools to detect, such as suspicious network activity.
How to Address the Growing Concerns of Insider Threats
To prevent or at least mitigate the possibility of insider threats, organizations should:
- Monitor critical data by performing scans and network analysis.
- Institute guardrails to detect abnormal user behavior such as the download of sensitive material.
- Deter threats by using layered security techniques such as defense-in-depth, and zero trust to prevent pilfering and abuse of data.
- Protect digital assets, critical documents, and intellectual property with up-to-date, cutting-edge security measures.
- Predict the likelihood of threat attacks by using threat tools, mechanisms, and algorithms.
- React commensurately to threats by simultaneously reducing threat opportunities and increasing the motivation and morale for insiders.