Insider Cyber Attacks: 5 Ways an Employee Can Cause a Data Breach
While hackers are commonly associated with cyber attacks, employees of a managed service provider's customers also can cause data breaches - but how? Here are five ways an employee can (accidentally or intentionally) contribute to a cyber attack.
![While hackers are commonly associated with cyber attacks an organization39s employees also can cause data breaches but how While hackers are commonly associated with cyber attacks an organization39s employees also can cause data breaches but how](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/blte3b1eadc75f9b41a/65247a5c26cdcc31ce0b02cc/sorry600x350_0.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
While hackers are commonly associated with cyber attacks, an organization's employees also can cause data breaches - but how? Here are five ways an employee can (accidentally or intentionally) contribute to a cyber attack.
Antivirus software provider Kaspersky Lab noted opening an attachment is one of the most common ways an employee can inadvertently launch an infection. Kaspersky also pointed out it can be difficult for an organization to determine which employee caused this type of data breach.
Are your organization’s laptops and USB drives encrypted? If not, a data breach could occur, especially if an employee laptop or USB drive that contains sensitive information falls into the wrong hands.
Your organization has IT security guidelines in place for a reason, but what happens if an employee chooses to ignore them? Unfortunately, an organization puts its critical data at risk if an employee deliberately bypasses email security to send a large file that contains sensitive information or sends an email that includes this information to an unauthorized recipient.
How well do you know your employees? Any employee could take the necessary time and resources to launch a cyber attack from the inside if your organization ignores its IT security.
Personally identifiable information (PII) includes any data that can be used to identify, contact or locate an individual. If an employee takes an unencrypted mobile device that contains PII offsite, this worker immediately puts his or her organization, and its data, in danger.
Personally identifiable information (PII) includes any data that can be used to identify, contact or locate an individual. If an employee takes an unencrypted mobile device that contains PII offsite, this worker immediately puts his or her organization, and its data, in danger.
While hackers are commonly associated with cyber attacks, employees also can cause data breaches, and that's something you should make sure stays at top-of-mind for your managed services customers.
Larry Bridwell, a global security strategist at password management company Sticky Password, recently told CNBC he believes the "insider hacker" is an underreported IT security problem for many organizations because this individual can be difficult to identify and monitor.
An employee who ignores an organization's IT security policies, Bridwell noted, immediately puts his or her company, its staff and its customers at risk.
"Data security policies are written in such manner that the average employees have a hard time understanding them, where there is too much legalese or too [many] technology issues involved or the policy is not explained enough to the employees to make them aware of the dangers of not following those policies," Bridwell said.
The cause of insider hacking, however, is not always malicious — in fact, an employee can accidentally cause a data breach due to carelessness.
"A lot of the threat of insider hacking today is just carelessness," Bridwell added. "In-users working at home or working at the office many times don't have the awareness of what the problems are."
How can an employee cause a data breach? Here are five ways an employee can (accidentally or intentionally) contribute to a cyber attack.
Also, I welcome your thoughts via Twitter @dkobialka or email at [email protected].
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