Insider Cyber Attacks: 5 Ways an Employee Can Cause a Data Breach

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].