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Updated: Dec 15, 2023   |   Vick Sandhu

4 benefits of insider risk management solutions and services for your business

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Insider risks are a major concern for organizations of all sizes and in all market sectors. The 2023 Insider Threat Report by Cybersecurity Insiders reports that 74% of cybersecurity professionals consider their organizations to be moderately or extremely vulnerable to insider threats.

Significant financial and operational damage can be caused by employees or contractors deliberately or accidentally misusing a company’s IT environment and data resources. 

Companies should consider insider risk management solutions and services to be an integral component of their cybersecurity posture. 

This article will review four benefits of incorporating insider risk management solutions and services to protect your business. 

Failure to effectively address insider risks threatens your business and your customers who have trusted you to secure their sensitive personal and financial information. Data breaches initiated by negligent or malicious insiders can cause irreparable harm to an organization’s reputation and ability to compete in the marketplace.

Un‎derstanding insider risks

The first benefit of insider risk management software is that it helps decision-makers identify risk indicators and understand the scope of insider threats. Companies cannot hope to protect themselves from insider risks if they don’t know how these risks affect their business. 

Gaining this knowledge is a crucial benefit of implementing a solution to address insider risks.

The fact that an organization is contemplating an insider threat management solution indicates that it is serious about protecting its business and enterprise data resources. 

One of the initial activities to undertake is an insider risk assessment. The assessment provides valuable information that can help guide mitigation strategies. Information obtained from an insider risk assessment includes:

  • Identifying and categorizing the systems and data assets in the IT environment
  • Identifying the unintentional and deliberate insider threats to the environment
  • Assessing the potential risks these threats pose to business-critical processes and sensitive data assets
  • Determining if existing cybersecurity measures and technology are sufficient to address the internal risks and modifying them if necessary

Check out the video below to learn a little more about insider risks:

 

Re‎ducing the business risks of insider threats

A data loss prevention (DLP) platform can be instrumental in your insider risk management program. An effective DLP solution protects data resources from the business risks of both malicious and unintentional insider incidents.

A DLP tool automatically enforces an organization’s data handling policy. This policy defines how enterprise data can be used for legitimate business purposes. Enforcing the policy involves restricting unauthorized users from accessing sensitive information and business-critical systems.

The Reveal platform by Next employs intelligent endpoint agents that monitor user behavior and leverage machine learning to identify and categorize data as it is ingested and used throughout the environment.

Reveal also offers customizable data protection policy templates that instantly protect against many insider risks. For example, these out-of-the-box policies can block users from accessing unsafe applications, using unsanctioned hardware, or accessing data without proper authorization.

The specific ways that Reveal reduces the business risks of insider threats include:

  • Identifying suspicious activity or abnormal user activity
  • Ensuring data is encrypted according to the data handling policy
  • Restricting users from downloading data to unauthorized devices
  • Blocking unauthorized access to restricted data assets

 

Warning graphic on a laptop screen
Image by TippaPatt via Shutterstock

Ed‎ucating the workforce about insider threats and risks

Your workforce represents the first line of defense against insider threats and risks.

A modern DLP platform like Reveal provides insider threat detection and incident-based user awareness training at the point of risk.

 

‎Educating your employees and contractors helps mitigate insider risks in several ways including:

  • Preventing accidental data breaches and misuse of enterprise resources
  • Reinforcing the details of the organization’s data handling policy
  • Raising the organization’s security IQ

A well-educated workforce can implement the data handling policy more effectively to protect against threats from unwitting insiders.

Sp‎ecific benefits of engaging an insider risk management service

Many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have to get by with a lack of skilled security professionals. This can make it challenging to effectively secure the IT environment from the wide range of insider risks. Engaging an experienced third party can help address this skills gap.

Next Analyst Services offers companies an effective method of enhancing security without increasing the size of their internal security teams. The service supplements your security team to help the organization understand and defend itself from insider threats.

Companies can enjoy the following advantages by engaging Next’s Analyst Services.

  • Organizations can enhance their understanding of findings identified by Reveal.
  • The machine learning training process can be accelerated to provide faster and deeper insights into insider risks.
  • Reveal can be tailored and customized to reflect your business requirements.

Next Analyst Services enable any size organization to reap the full benefits of the Reveal platform.

Ch‎oosing a solution or a service for your unique business situation

Organizations may opt to implement and manage an insider risk management solution themselves. Adopting a modern DLP solution such as Reveal enables a company to enforce its data handling policy and ensure that enterprise resources are not deliberately or unintentionally misused.

Engaging Next Analyst Services helps address skill gaps and lets smaller organizations get the maximum benefits of Reveal. Contact Next today, schedule a demo of the tool in action, and allow the experts to implement this effective insider risk management solution.

 

Employees or contractors reviewing analytics and sensitive data
Photo by fauxels via Pexels

Fr‎equently asked questions

Why should my small company worry about insider risks?

Your small company should worry about insider risks because they can be devastating and quickly put you out of business. Even the most trusted employees can accidentally expose sensitive data or inadvertently affect the operation of business-critical systems and processes. 

These risks can be greatly reduced by implementing a data protection solution that protects against accidental misuse of enterprise resources.

What is the importance of incident-based training?

Incident-based training is important because it continuously reinforces the organization’s data handling policy parameters to the workforce. When an employee makes a mistake and attempts an unauthorized activity, they will be blocked from performing it and receive instructions regarding their error. 

Over time, this training will reduce accidental violations of the data handling policy.

Does a DLP tool help protect against risks from external threat actors?

Yes, a DLP solution can help protect the environment from external threat actors. A hacker who gains access to the environment with compromised credentials will be restricted from downloading or printing information to unauthorized devices outside the enterprise network. Locking down resources with a DLP tool protects them from all types of misuse.

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