In an article by Jasmine Henry from Security Intelligence on August 21, 2018 entitled, “These 5 Types of Insider Threats Could Lead to Costly Data Breaches,” she wrote about insider threats which are caused by employees and leaders within a company. These insider threats can be among the costliest and hardest to detect of all data breaches.

The five types of insider threats consist of the following: (1) Nonresponders to awareness training exercises; (2) Inadvertent insiders with simple negligence; (3) Insider collusion with malicious external threat actors; (4) Persistent malicious insiders or “second streamers” seeking supplemental income and (5) Disgruntled employees committing deliberate sabotage or intellectual property theft.

Human threats and tools for behavioral analytics are the best way to safeguard against insider threats to a business. These include the following five areas: (1) Start with data protection to create transparency by discovering and classifying at risk assets and having ongoing monitoring and cognitive analytics; (2) Adopt behavioral analytics by looking at changes in an individual’s pattern of workplace habits and information consumption that can predict risk; (3) Assign risk scores by identifying employees who are at heightened risk for error or criminal behavior identified and assess the risk and control access; (4) Reduce vulnerabilities by maintaining continual compliance and the use of patchwork and network monitoring to reveal compromised systems or employee threats and (5) Mitigate internal threats because statistically the majority of data breaches occur here and use compliance tools, data protection, and behavioral analysis to proactively protect the networks.