Cybersecurity Awareness Month – Insider Attacks

What harm can come from Insider Attacks?

Each year since Covid hit, employees have been resigning in ever increasing numbers.  Finding strong replacement candidates can be tough.  But did you know that there are other costs to your business from departing employees?  You see, many of them work remote and squirrel away your critical and sensitive information on their own equipment at their home outside your ability to recover the data when they depart.

Still others may be more bold and seek to sell your proprietary and critical information on the dark web, or directly to your competitors.  While it may seem unfair in your mind, and we’d all like to think that everyone we hire will be truthful and loyal, it never hurts to learn how to spot and check for malicious insider behaviors that could lead to damages to your company.  CyberHoot provides insider attack training as part of its foundational training courses. Sign up and instill awareness in your employees on how to spot and report suspicious insider behaviors!

With CyberHoot you can learn about far more than insider threats.  You will learn about password hygiene, why Password Managers matter so much, and how to spot and avoid phishing attacks.  In addition, you can hire our vCISOs to help you implement all of the cybersecurity best practices listed below.

CyberHoot Best practices:

1. Train your employees on the common attacks that are out there.  From weak passwords and password managers, to the importance of multi-factor authentication and how to spot phishing attacks.  Awareness is the key to defending your business.
2. Govern you employees with cybersecurity policies including Acceptable Use, Password, Information Handling and a Written Information Security Policy.
3. Establish cybersecurity best practice processes such as a Vulnerability Alert Management Process (VAMP) and a Cybersecurity Incident Management Process (CIMP) to guide and require action in the face of an emergency.  Then move on onboarding and offboarding processes, SaaS management processes, and 3rd party risk management.
4. Establish strong technical protections including: a Firewall, antivirus, anti-malware, anti-spam, multi-factor authentication on all critical accounts,  Enable full disk encryption, manage the keys carefully, and most importantly, adopt, train on and require all employees to use a Password Manager.
5. Test employees on how to spot and avoid phishing attacks.  CyberHoot has released a disruptive method of Phish Testing the fills in gaps in your employees knowledge without punishing them for failure.  Instead we reward them for success.  More info is available here.
6. Backup your data by following our 3-2-1 Backup methodology to ensure you can recover your business from a cybersecurity event.
7. In the modern Work-from-Home era, make sure you’re managing personal devices connecting to your network by validating their security (patching, antivirus, DNS protections) or prohibiting their use entirely.
8. If you haven’t had a risk assessment by a 3rd party in the last 2 years, you should have one now. Establishing a risk management framework in your organization is critical to addressing your most egregious risks with your finite time and money.
9. Buy Cyber-Insurance to protect you in a catastrophic failure situation. Cyber-Insurance is no different than Car, Fire, Flood, or Life insurance. It’s there when you need it most.

CyberHoot believes that for many small to medium sized businesses and MSPs, you can greatly improve your defenses and chances of not becoming another victim of cyberattack if you follow the advice above.

We hope you’re enjoying Cybersecurity Awareness Month (CAM).  Visit or subscribe to CyberHoot’s Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter pages to get daily updates throughout the month.

Additional Reading:

FBI Insider Threat Brochure

FBI Insider Threat Training Website

Overview of Insider Threats (7 min)

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