Data Threats Are Often Internal

Threats to data and security don’t always start on the outside. Many times, actors within an organization carry out sophisticated and malicious attacks designed to steal money or IP or both. Without the right form of monitoring, ill-intentioned employees pose significant threats to your data, systems, and brand. Of equal concern are disgruntled ex-employees who have access to systems and who might be motivated to steal confidential information or cause other malicious damage. Having information about the company that could be used against it, current and former insiders alike are able to launch complex attacks that can take, on average, 54.4 days to be resolved, according to a Ponemon Institute report. Unintentional yet damaging behaviors, such as re-using source code from previous employers, or violating BYOD usage policies, can be just as harmful as malevolent attacks. Cloud security monitoring should occur at the workload layer, where activity can be monitored across multiple areas to accurately identify and stop inappropriate internal behavior before it causes damage.