The 6 Worst Insider Attacks of 2018 – So Far
Stalkers, fraudsters, saboteurs, and all nature of malicious insiders have put the hurt on some very high-profile employers.
June 29, 2018
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If recent statistics are any indication, enterprise security teams might be greatly underestimating the risk that insider threats pose to their organizations. One study, by Crowd Research Partners, shows just 3% of executives pegged the potential cost of an insider threat at more than $2 million. Yet, according to Ponemon Institute, the average cost of insider threats per year for an organization is more than $8 million.
And those are just the quantifiable risks. When insider attackers hit hardest — particularly malicious insiders who are looking to commit fraud or intentionally do bad — the ramifications can be much more widespread than the typical data breach.
We're just six months into the year, and already we've seen some particularly damaging malicious insider events illustrate this truth. Here are some of the highest-profile incidents, all of which can act as a warning to enterprises to get serious about their monitoring and controls around employee activity.
The alleged factory sabotage at Tesla has definitely stolen the insider threats highlights reel for 2018 so far. News broke via the leak of a company email from CEO Elon Musk, who alleges a trusted insider was deliberately sabotaging software systems that control the car company's manufacturing processes. Now that spin is being countered by claims from the employee that he was actually whistleblowing questionable manufacturing policies. Either way, security pros are asking why better controls weren't in place to keep an insider from abusing his privileges so egregiously.
The social media giant had to fire not just any trusted employee, but a security engineer, of all people, for grossly abusing his privileges. The now ex-employee used his access to turn snooper, essentially invading the privacy of Facebook users to stalk women online. In light of this news, Motherboard reports that this incident might not be isolated and that multiple Facebook employees have been fired for abusing their access into users' private information.
It might have happened last year, but it only came to light last month that Coca-Cola was hit by a classic insider breach situation in which a former employee stole away with sensitive data on a personal hard drive. The data in question was personal information about 8,000 Coca-Cola workers. According to reports, the company didn't learn about the breach until law enforcement officers came knocking on its door.
Speech-recognition software firm Nuance was hit with an insider attack that ended up leaking patient records for 45,000 individuals that were hosted on one of its medical transcription platforms. The leak came at the hands of a former employee who, according to a federal investigation, hacked into the company's servers to access the patient information.
In April, SunTrust Bank announced that it believed a former employee stole the names, addresses, phone numbers, and account balances of 1.5 million bank clients. The malicious insider was attempting to provide the data to a criminal outside the organization, though at the time of disclosure the bank said the data hadn't been sent.
In April, SunTrust Bank announced that it believed a former employee stole the names, addresses, phone numbers, and account balances of 1.5 million bank clients. The malicious insider was attempting to provide the data to a criminal outside the organization, though at the time of disclosure the bank said the data hadn't been sent.
If recent statistics are any indication, enterprise security teams might be greatly underestimating the risk that insider threats pose to their organizations. One study, by Crowd Research Partners, shows just 3% of executives pegged the potential cost of an insider threat at more than $2 million. Yet, according to Ponemon Institute, the average cost of insider threats per year for an organization is more than $8 million.
And those are just the quantifiable risks. When insider attackers hit hardest — particularly malicious insiders who are looking to commit fraud or intentionally do bad — the ramifications can be much more widespread than the typical data breach.
We're just six months into the year, and already we've seen some particularly damaging malicious insider events illustrate this truth. Here are some of the highest-profile incidents, all of which can act as a warning to enterprises to get serious about their monitoring and controls around employee activity.
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