The Insider Threat

This book provides emergent knowledge relating to physical, cyber, and human risk mitigation in a practical and readable approach for the corporate environment. It presents and discusses practical applications of risk management techniques along with useable practical policy change options. This practical organizational security management approach examines multiple aspects of security to protect against physical, cyber, and human risk. A practical more tactical focus includes managing vulnerabilities and applying countermeasures. The book guides readers to a greater depth of understanding and action-oriented options.

Managing the Insider Threat: No Dark Corners and the Rising Tide Menace, Second Edition follows up on the success of – and insight provided by – the first edition, reframing the insider threat by distinguishing between sudden impact and slow onset (aka “rising tide”) insider attacks. This edition is fully updated with coverage from the previous edition having undergone extensive review and revision, including updating citations and publications that have been published in the last decade. Three new chapters drill down into the advanced exploration of rising tide threats, examining the nuanced complexities and presenting new tools such as the loyalty ledger (Chapter 10) and intensity scale (Chapter 11). New explorations of ambiguous situations and options for thwarting hostile insiders touch on examples that call for tolerance, friction, or radical turnaround (Chapter 11). Additionally, a more oblique discussion (Chapter 12) explores alternatives for bolstering organizational resilience in circumstances where internal threats show signs of gaining ascendancy over external ones, hence a need for defenders to promote clearer thinking as a means of enhancing resilience against hostile insiders. Coverage goes on to identify counters to such pitfalls, called lifelines, providing examples of questions rephrased to encourage clear thinking and reasoned debate without inviting emotional speech that derails both. The goal is to redirect hostile insiders, thereby offering alternatives to bolstering organizational resilience – particularly in circumstances where internal threats show signs of gaining ascendancy over external ones, hence a need for defenders to promote clearer thinking as a means of enhancing resilience against hostile insiders. Defenders of institutions and observers of human rascality will find, in Managing the Insider Threat, Second Edition, new tools and applications for the No Dark Corners approach to countering a vexing predicament that seems to be increasing in frequency, scope, and menace.

The Secret Service, FBI, NSA, CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) and George Washington University have all identified “Insider Threats as one of the most significant challenges facing IT, security, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals today. This book will teach IT professional and law enforcement officials about the dangers posed by insiders to their IT infrastructure and how to mitigate these risks by designing and implementing secure IT systems as well as security and human resource policies. The book will begin by identifying the types of insiders who are most likely to pose a threat. Next, the reader will learn about the variety of tools and attacks used by insiders to commit their crimes including: encryption, steganography, and social engineering. The book will then specifically address the dangers faced by corporations and government agencies. Finally, the reader will learn how to design effective security systems to prevent insider attacks and how to investigate insider security breeches that do occur. Throughout the book, the authors will use their backgrounds in the CIA to analyze several, high-profile cases involving insider threats. * Tackles one of the most significant challenges facing IT, security, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals today * Both co-authors worked for several years at the CIA, and they use this experience to analyze several high-profile cases involving insider threat attacks * Despite the frequency and harm caused by insider attacks, there are no competing books on this topic.books on this topic

Every type of organization is vulnerable to insider abuse, errors, and malicious attacks: Grant anyone access to a system and you automatically introduce a vulnerability. Insiders can be current or former employees, contractors, or other business partners who have been granted authorized access to networks, systems, or data, and all of them can bypass security measures through legitimate means. Insider Threat – A Guide to Understanding, Detecting, and Defending Against the Enemy from Within shows how a security culture based on international best practice can help mitigate the insider threat, providing short-term quick fixes and long-term solutions that can be applied as part of an effective insider threat program. Read this book to learn the seven organizational characteristics common to insider threat victims; the ten stages of a malicious attack; the ten steps of a successful insider threat program; and the construction of a three-tier security culture, encompassing artefacts, values, and shared assumptions. Perhaps most importantly, it also sets out what not to do, listing a set of worst practices that should be avoided. About the author Dr Julie Mehan is the founder and president of JEMStone Strategies and a principal in a strategic consulting firm in Virginia. She has delivered cybersecurity and related privacy services to senior commercial, Department of Defense, and federal government clients. Dr Mehan is also an associate professor at the University of Maryland University College, specializing in courses in cybersecurity, cyberterror, IT in organizations, and ethics in an Internet society

Insider Threat: Detection, Mitigation, Deterrence and Prevention presents a set of solutions to address the increase in cases of insider threat. This includes espionage, embezzlement, sabotage, fraud, intellectual property theft, and research and development theft from current or former employees. This book outlines a step-by-step path for developing an insider threat program within any organization, focusing on management and employee engagement, as well as ethical, legal, and privacy concerns. In addition, it includes tactics on how to collect, correlate, and visualize potential risk indicators into a seamless system for protecting an organization’s critical assets from malicious, complacent, and ignorant insiders. Insider Threat presents robust mitigation strategies that will interrupt the forward motion of a potential insider who intends to do harm to a company or its employees, as well as an understanding of supply chain risk and cyber security, as they relate to insider threat. Offers an ideal resource for executives and managers who want the latest information available on protecting their organization’s assets from this growing threat Shows how departments across an entire organization can bring disparate, but related, information together to promote the early identification of insider threats Provides an in-depth explanation of mitigating supply chain risk Outlines progressive approaches to cyber security

Insider Threats in Cyber Security is a cutting edge text presenting IT and non-IT facets of insider threats together. This volume brings together a critical mass of well-established worldwide researchers, and provides a unique multidisciplinary overview. Monica van Huystee, Senior Policy Advisor at MCI, Ontario, Canada comments "The book will be a must read, so of course I’ll need a copy." Insider Threats in Cyber Security covers all aspects of insider threats, from motivation to mitigation. It includes how to monitor insider threats (and what to monitor for), how to mitigate insider threats, and related topics and case studies. Insider Threats in Cyber Security is intended for a professional audience composed of the military, government policy makers and banking; financing companies focusing on the Secure Cyberspace industry. This book is also suitable for advanced-level students and researchers in computer science as a secondary text or reference book.

Today's malware mutates randomly to avoid detection, but reactively adaptive malware is more intelligent, learning and adapting to new computer defenses on the fly. Using the same algorithms that antivirus software uses to detect viruses, reactively adaptive malware deploys those algorithms to outwit antivirus defenses and to go undetected. This book provides details of the tools, the types of malware the tools will detect, implementation of the tools in a cloud computing framework and the applications for insider threat detection.

Wikileaks recent data exposures demonstrate the danger now posed by insiders, who can often bypass physical and technical security measures designed to prevent unauthorized access. The insider threat team at CERT helps readers systematically identify, prevent, detect, and mitigate threats.

"This compendium of research on insider threats is essential reading for all personnel with accountabilities for security; it shows graphically the extent and persistence of the threat that all organizations face and against which they must take preventive measures." — Roger Howsley, Executive Director, World Institute for Nuclear Security High-security organizations around the world face devastating threats from insiders—trusted employees with access to sensitive information, facilities, and materials. From Edward Snowden to the Fort Hood shooter to the theft of nuclear materials, the threat from insiders is on the front page and at the top of the policy agenda. Insider Threats offers detailed case studies of insider disasters across a range of different types of institutions, from biological research laboratories, to nuclear power plants, to the U.S. Army. Matthew Bunn and Scott D. Sagan outline cognitive and organizational biases that lead organizations to downplay the insider threat, and they synthesize "worst practices" from these past mistakes, offering lessons that will be valuable for any organization with high security and a lot to lose. Insider threats pose dangers to anyone who handles information that is secret or proprietary, material that is highly valuable or hazardous, people who must be protected, or facilities that might be sabotaged. This is the first book to offer in-depth case studies across a range of industries and contexts, allowing entities such as nuclear facilities and casinos to learn from each other. It also offers an unprecedented analysis of terrorist thinking about using insiders to get fissile material or sabotage nuclear facilities. Contributors: Matthew Bunn, Harvard University; Andreas Hoelstad Dæhli, Oslo; Kathryn M. Glynn, IBM Global Business Services; Thomas Hegghammer, Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, Oslo; Austin Long, Columbia University; Scott D. Sagan, Stanford University; Ronald Schouten, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School; Jessica Stern, Harvard University; Amy B. Zegart, Stanford University

An information system may be regarded as an organized set of resources, both technological and human. Security should take this specificity into consideration in order to ensure an overall security of information systems. The security of information systems is usually tackled in a technological perspective. This book proposes to focus not only on information systems' security in a technological perspective, but also in a human, managerial and organizational perspective.

Since 2001, the CERT® Insider Threat Center at Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute (SEI) has collected and analyzed information about more than seven hundred insider cyber crimes, ranging from national security espionage to theft of trade secrets. The CERT® Guide to Insider Threats describes CERT’s findings in practical terms, offering specific guidance and countermeasures that can be immediately applied by executives, managers, security officers, and operational staff within any private, government, or military organization. The authors systematically address attacks by all types of malicious insiders, including current and former employees, contractors, business partners, outsourcers, and even cloud-computing vendors. They cover all major types of insider cyber crime: IT sabotage, intellectual property theft, and fraud. For each, they present a crime profile describing how the crime tends to evolve over time, as well as motivations, attack methods, organizational issues, and precursor warnings that could have helped the organization prevent the incident or detect it earlier. Beyond identifying crucial patterns of suspicious behavior, the authors present concrete defensive measures for protecting both systems and data. This book also conveys the big picture of the insider threat problem over time: the complex interactions and unintended consequences of existing policies, practices, technology, insider mindsets, and organizational culture. Most important, it offers actionable recommendations for the entire organization, from executive management and board members to IT, data owners, HR, and legal departments. With this book, you will find out how to Identify hidden signs of insider IT sabotage, theft of sensitive information, and fraud Recognize insider threats throughout the software development life cycle Use advanced threat controls to resist attacks by both technical and nontechnical insiders Increase the effectiveness of existing technical security tools by enhancing rules, configurations, and associated business processes Prepare for unusual insider attacks, including attacks linked to organized crime or the Internet underground By implementing this book’s security practices, you will be incorporating protection mechanisms designed to resist the vast majority of malicious insider attacks.

This book defines the nature and scope of insider problems as viewed by the financial industry. This edited volume is based on the first workshop on Insider Attack and Cyber Security, IACS 2007. The workshop was a joint effort from the Information Security Departments of Columbia University and Dartmouth College. The book sets an agenda for an ongoing research initiative to solve one of the most vexing problems encountered in security, and a range of topics from critical IT infrastructure to insider threats. In some ways, the insider problem is the ultimate security problem.

An organization’s employees are often more intimate with its computer system than anyone else. Many also have access to sensitive information regarding the company and its customers. This makes employees prime candidates for sabotaging a system if they become disgruntled or for selling privileged information if they become greedy. Insider Computer Fraud: An In-depth Framework for Detecting and Defending against Insider IT Attacks presents the methods, safeguards, and techniques that help protect an organization from insider computer fraud. Drawing from the author’s vast experience assessing the adequacy of IT security for the banking and securities industries, the book presents a practical framework for identifying, measuring, monitoring, and controlling the risks associated with insider threats. It not only provides an analysis of application or system-related risks, it demonstrates the interrelationships that exist between an application and the IT infrastructure components it uses to transmit, process, and store sensitive data. The author also examines the symbiotic relationship between the risks, controls, threats, and action plans that should be deployed to enhance the overall information security governance processes. Increasing the awareness and understanding necessary to effectively manage the risks and controls associated with an insider threat, this book is an invaluable resource for those interested in attaining sound and best practices over the risk management process.

In the eighth action-packed thriller in the New York Times bestselling Pike Logan series, ISIS, the most maniacal terrorist organization the modern world has ever seen, is poised to make their most audacious strike yet. The United States has anticipated and averted countless attacks from terrorist groups—thanks in large part to the extralegal counterterrorist unit known as the Taskforce. But now, a much more insidious evil is about to shatter the false sense of safety surrounding civilized nations. While world powers combat ISIS on the battlefield, a different threat is set in motion by the group—one that can’t be defeated by an airstrike. Off the radar of every Western intelligence organization, able to penetrate America or any European state, they intend to commit an act of unimaginable barbarity. Only Pike Logan and the Taskforce stand in the way of an attack no one anticipates, a grand deception that will wreak unthinkable chaos and reverberate throughout the Western world.

Data Loss Prevention is easier and cheaper than cure - the insider threat poses a significant and increasing problem for organisations. The use of highly connected computers makes controlling information much more difficult than in the past. This new pocket guide intends to shed light on the key security issues facing organisations from insiders to get them up to speed quickly. It is written by Clive Blackwell who is a researcher at Royal Holloway, University of London, where his main field is security architecture. He has developed a practical three-layer security architecture to model computer networks such as the Internet and other complex systems such as critical infrastructure. He is currently applying the model to the insider threat within different business sectors, which has resulted in several academic papers. Clive is a regular speaker on security at both academic and business conferences in the US and Europe as well as the UK. He has recently been invited to give talks on the insider threat at two major business conferences. He has about 20 publications to his name within the last two years, so he is aware of the security issues facing business.

From data security company Code42, Inside Jobs offers companies of all sizes a new way to secure today’s collaborative cultures—one that works without compromising sensitive company data or slowing business down. Authors Joe Payne, Jadee Hanson, and Mark Wojtasiak, seasoned veterans in the cybersecurity space, provide a top-down and bottom-up picture of the rewards and perils involved in running and securing organizations focused on rapid, iterative, and collaborative innovation. Modern day data security can no longer be accomplished by “Big Brother” forms of monitoring or traditional prevention solutions that rely solely on classification and blocking systems. These technologies frustrate employees, impede collaboration, and force productivity work-arounds that risk the very data you need to secure. They provide the illusion that your trade secrets, customer lists, patents, and other intellectual property are protected. That couldn’t be farther from the truth, as insider threats continue to grow. These include: Well-intentioned employees inadvertently sharing proprietary data Departing employees taking your trade secrets with them to the competition A high-risk employee moving source code to an unsanctioned cloud service What’s the solution? It’s not the hunt for hooded, malicious wrongdoers that you might expect. The new world of data security is built on security acting as an ally versus an adversary. It assumes positive intent, creates organizational transparency, establishes acceptable data use policies, increases security awareness, and provides ongoing training. Whether you are a CEO, CIO, CISO, CHRO, general counsel, or business leader, this book will help you understand the important role you have to play in securing the collaborative cultures of the future.

As data represent a key asset for today's organizations, the problem of how to protect this data from theft and misuse is at the forefront of these organizations' minds. Even though today several data security techniques are available to protect data and computing infrastructures, many such techniques -- such as firewalls and network security tools -- are unable to protect data from attacks posed by those working on an organization's "inside." These "insiders" usually have authorized access to relevant information systems, making it extremely challenging to block the misuse of information while still allowing them to do their jobs. This book discusses several techniques that can provide effective protection against attacks posed by people working on the inside of an organization. Chapter One introduces the notion of insider threat and reports some data about data breaches due to insider threats. Chapter Two covers authentication and access control techniques, and Chapter Three shows how these general security techniques can be extended and used in the context of protection from insider threats. Chapter Four addresses anomaly detection techniques that are used to determine anomalies in data accesses by insiders. These anomalies are often indicative of potential insider data attacks and therefore play an important role in protection from these attacks. Security information and event management (SIEM) tools and fine-grained auditing are discussed in Chapter Five. These tools aim at collecting, analyzing, and correlating -- in real-time -- any information and event that may be relevant for the security of an organization. As such, they can be a key element in finding a solution to such undesirable insider threats. Chapter Six goes on to provide a survey of techniques for separation-of-duty (SoD). SoD is an important principle that, when implemented in systems and tools, can strengthen data protection from malicious insiders. However, to date, very few approaches have been proposed for implementing SoD in systems. In Chapter Seven, a short survey of a commercial product is presented, which provides different techniques for protection from malicious users with system privileges -- such as a DBA in database management systems. Finally, in Chapter Eight, the book concludes with a few remarks and additional research directions. Table of Contents: Introduction / Authentication / Access Control / Anomaly Detection / Security Information and Event Management and Auditing / Separation of Duty / Case Study: Oracle Database Vault / Conclusion