Imagine yourself in a dining room in your company with colleagues and friends enjoying a meal. Suddenly, the lights flash and everyone’s belongings mysteriously disappear. The only suspects are those in the environment, including you. But how to find the culprit?

As much as the introduction of this text sounds a bit dramatic and the plot seems taken from an Agatha Christie book or a Sherlock Holmes tale, the feeling of having a threat within the company is very similar. An insider attack happens when least expected, while everyone involved in this compromised environment goes from innocent workers to suspects in a moment, and identifying the culprit is a challenging task.

Insider threats may be represented by careless or inexperienced employees, dissatisfied employees, third parties, partners, undercover spies, or any internal component that exploits or intends to exploit their legitimate access to assets to do something unauthorized.

According to a study by Verizon, 57% of information leaks involve insider threats and 15% of leaks are a consequence of the misuse of privileges.

As with detective cases, where a thief or a neighbor who does not live in the house is the primary suspect in crimes, many companies focus on threats outside the organization, such as cybercriminals and malware, while a dishonest employee may have been working among others for a long time without being identified, stealing information, and damaging business.

By having legitimate access and often unrestricted permission, these internal agents, malicious or not, can cause incidents within the organization without drawing attention, as they are somehow trusted by others while doing their job.

Disclosing confidential information, facilitating third-party access, and breaking equipment vital to a system are some of the incidents these bad employees may have. 

In addition, careless professionals who do not know the company and its processes are also insider threats, as they can cause errors when deleting important information or downloading infected files, for example, just because they are not prepared.

We invite you to continue reading the text and learn what you need to do to protect your business from insider threats.

Who Are Considered Insider Threats?

Insider threats can come from employees and even partners or third parties who have access to your systems, as detailed below.

• Employees: They are above suspicion, are considered part of the organization, and are the last suspects.
• Service Providers: These people are underestimated and they can take advantage of their access.
• Partners and Third Parties: They are always under contracts and therefore receive access with high privileges, so the contract offers false protection to the company.

Former employees are also a threat. According to Deloitte, 59% of employees who leave a company voluntarily or involuntarily take data with them.

What Are the Main Motivations for Insider Threats?

In most cases, what motivates these internal malicious agents to cause an incident are financial and ideological issues, as well as the desire for recognition, loyalty to family, friends, or country, and even revenge. 

Regardless of motivations, malicious internal agents seek to leak sensitive data and disrupt processes, as these are the events that can most damage an organization. This fact is clearly corroborated by cases reported in the media, such as:

• Edward Snowden Case: Snowden leaked nearly two million NSA files in 2013.
• Ricky Mitchell: After he found out he was going to be fired, he restarted EnerVest’s servers to factory settings and discontinued operations for a month.
• Zhangyi Liu: Chinese programmer working for Litton/PRC Inc. who accessed sensitive Air Force data. The contractor copied the credential passwords that were allowed to create, change, and delete any file on the network and posted them on the Internet.
• Christopher Grupe: After being fired from the Canadian Pacific Railway, he accessed the system again to delete files and change passwords, preventing administrators from authenticating.
• Paige Thompson: Former software engineer at Amazon Web Service, she accessed credit card information from more than 100 million Capital One customers. Amazon’s cloud environment configuration was not secure. Paige was aware of this incorrect configuration and abused her privileges to access data and share these methods in online chats.

Preventing an internal agent from stealing information can be more challenging than preventing an external agent from having access to assets, as internal agents have unrestricted access to endpoints and the network, and these are the components that correspond respectively to the means used to carry out attacks on an organization.

Other assets used to cause incidents internally are BYOD devices, which are increasingly accepted in companies today, even though their use is often uncontrolled.

Through these assets, attackers reach their real targets – databases and file servers -, as they keep the most valuable information for internal and external attackers, such as customer data, financial data, intellectual property, and privileged account data (credentials and passwords, for example).

This type of attack increases due to insufficient strategies or solutions to protect data, as well as a lack of training, employee expertise, and risk awareness at the administrative level of the organization.

What Are the Cyber Risks Associated with Insider Threats?

As we saw earlier, insider threats are not always exclusively from people who work directly for your organization. We can include consultants, outsourced contractors, suppliers, and anyone who has legitimate access to some of your resources.

To understand more about the subject, we have selected five possible scenarios in which insider threats may arise

1. An employee or third party who performs inappropriate actions that are not intentionally malicious, they are just careless. Often, these people look for ways to do their jobs, but they misuse the assets, do not follow acceptable usage policies, and install unauthorized or dubious applications.
2. A partner or third party that compromises security through negligence, misuse, or malicious access or use of an asset. For example, a system administrator may incorrectly configure a server or database, making it open to the public instead of private and with controlled access, inadvertently exposing confidential information.
3. An agent bribed or requested by a third party to extract information and data. People under financial stress are often the main targets.
4. A rejected or dissatisfied employee is motivated to bring down an organization from the inside, disrupting business and destroying or tampering with data.
5. A person with legitimate privileged access to corporate assets, who seeks to exploit them for personal gain, usually stealing and redirecting information.

Whether the damage is caused intentionally or accidentally, the consequences of insider attacks are very real.

One of the ways to mitigate the risks of the scenarios above is to implement monitoring tools to track who accessed which files and alert administrators about unusual activities.

In addition to these actions, the management of privileged accounts also helps to reduce damage caused by insider threats and contributes to proactive cybersecurity behavior.

How to Reduce the Risks Associated with Insider Threats?

Any corporation is subject to some type of cyberattack, and it is essential to have a system that defends and maintains data integrity.

According to a report by Fortinet Threat Intelligence, Brazil has suffered more than 24 billion cyberattack attempts in 2019, a fact that reinforces the need to have efficient solutions against this type of threat.

Preventing external attacks is already very common within companies, and according to the Verizon Data Risk Report, 34% of data breaches involve internal agents and 17% of all confidential files were accessible to all employees, which turns on a big alert for companies to protect themselves from internal threats as well as external ones.

For this, it is recommended that some technology be implemented to efficiently monitor the privileged access of employees. To help you with this task, we have separated 5 practices on how to protect your company from insider threats, check them out:

1- Know Who Has Access to Privileged Accounts

One of the biggest mistakes of companies is making privileged credentials available to many users, which directly affects data breaches and the risk of leaks through internal threats.

You need to find out which people have access to protected environments, and ensure that people who do not need to access such environments have some kind of administrative credential, limiting the number of privileged users.

Ideally, credentials with a higher level of privilege should be controlled by those responsible for IT, so that there is no type of breach.

2- Ensure User Traceability

With the use of some technologies, you can know who, when, where, and what actions were taken by the user to perform a privileged session, in addition to limiting the actions that can be performed in the environment.

Some solutions alert and block the user who performs any improper action and provide session recording for analysis.

3- Third-Party Access

If any type of service provided to your company is outsourced, there must be some type of protection.

Ideally, any type of access to company environments should be monitored through a VPN dedicated to a specific application for a predetermined time.

The best way to ensure that there are no loopholes for internal threats in your company is by having a complete PAM password vault, which ensures protection from possible threats, monitors privileged sessions, and automates tasks.

4 – Password Culture

Even if it seems ineffective, implementing a strong password culture is a great way to avoid insider threats.

By memorizing a simple password, for example, a malicious employee can easily infiltrate privileged access and move around in environments that do not suit them, allowing possible attacks on the corporation.

In addition to protecting companies against insider threats, strong passwords also help to protect against external cyberattacks, therefore, ask your employees to use passwords with uppercase, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols.

It is also important to change these passwords constantly, so that there are no future problems.

5 – Backups

Even using every possible way to reduce the company’s security breaches, it is essential to have a way to recover the data in case of any leak or access block.

A good option is automatic backups in critical and strategic systems, which allows the company to refuse to give in to any type of threat by the attacker.

6 – Extra Practice

Obviously, this type of attack is the most difficult to predict and prevent. These are malicious agents who may be working alongside you right now.

However, some measures can be taken to make it difficult for a new internal attack to occur:

• Checking Employee Background Before Hiring
• Applying Mandatory Vacation and Work Rotation.
• Monitoring Employee Behavior.
• Educating and Training Employees.
• Encouraging Employees to Report Abnormal Activities and Strange Behaviors of Their Colleagues if They Notice it.

Even With the Risk This Type of User Poses, They Are Necessary for the System. So, How to Control Them?

In another Haystax study, 60% of privileged IT users/administrators represent the greatest risk. They have large permissions within a system to execute infinite commands and view a large amount of information.

Privileged users are like stewards in suspense stories. They are the ones who have unrestricted access to various rooms in the house, perform important tasks, and are extremely trustworthy to members of the house, so it is no surprise when they are revealed as the guilty ones.

That is, privileged accounts are those with elevated access permission that allow account holders to access critical systems and perform administrative or privileged tasks. Like ordinary user accounts, privileged accounts also require a password to access systems and perform tasks.

Privileged accounts can be used by people or be non-human when used by applications or systems. The latter are also called service accounts. Privileged accounts, such as administrative accounts, are often used by system administrators to manage applications and hardware, such as network assets, and databases.

The problem with these accounts is that they are often shared, used on many systems, and can use weak or standard passwords, making it easier for insider agents to work.

Thus, when these accounts are not properly managed, they give insider agents the ability to access and download the organization’s most sensitive data, distribute malicious software, bypass existing security controls, and delete trails to hide their activities in audits.

One of the most secure ways to manage privileged accounts is through PAM (Privileged Access Management) solutions. This solution consists of cybersecurity strategies and technologies to exercise control over privileged access and permissions for users, accounts, processes, and systems in a corporate environment.

PAM As a Solution to Manage Insider Threats

As mentioned, privileged accounts represent high-value targets for insider agents. 

Organizations need to adopt a Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution and also provide data on access to privileged accounts for this solution in their monitoring systems.

Privileged Access Management – or simply PAM – consists of the technology and processes that control privileged access, store all access records for auditing purposes and analyze the actions taken by users in real-time, generating alerts about unusual activities. Using this technology can make the identification and mitigation of insider attacks much faster and more efficient.

Therefore, we selected 7 resources present in the PAM solutions that are strategic for those companies that seek to reduce the possibilities of insider threats.

1. Use of effective policies for all employees, whether remote, service providers, or third parties.
2. Protection for the credentials of your most confidential assets (confidential applications, databases, privileged accounts, and other critical systems) in a central and secure repository.
3. Limitation of privileged access to confidential information, such as customer data, personally identifiable information, trade secrets, intellectual property, and confidential financial data.
4. Least privilege procedures and resources to provide employees with just the access they need. That is what we call a need to know.
5. Limitation of local administrator rights for all employees’ workstations; and implementation of permission, restriction, and denial policies to block malicious applications.
6. Implementation of workflows for the creation and governance of privileged accounts.
7. Monitoring and recording of privileged access to confidential information, data, and systems.

The first steps to better protect yourself and your customers from insider threats consist of applying at least some privileged access management best practices.

Start by learning more about how the principle of least privilege works, then it is important to establish and apply the best password management practices and, finally, invest in a comprehensive PAM solution that has all these resources at your disposal.

Learn About the senhasegura Solution

Senhasegura is one of the largest PAM solutions in the world according to Gartner. In addition to preventing data leaks and abuse of privilege and avoiding internal threats, the solution is complete to guarantee protection against external threats. 

The solution has granular access controls, credential management, detailed logging and session recording, and the ability to analyze user behavior. The senhasegura solution has several security locks that guarantee data protection from insider and external threats, such as logging, auditing, SSH key management, modules for secure DevOps, among others.

In addition, the implementation of senhasegura helps your organization to:

• Apply the Security aspect to your DevOps pipeline, ensuring DevSecOps.
• Carry out the proper management of digital certificates.
• Comply with LGPD and GDPR.
• Ensure security in your Cloud environment.

Request a demo now and discover hands-on the benefits of senhasegura to limit the damage caused by insider threats.

Due to the increasing technological development in the market, we can clearly see how much the trend of product and service purchases by consumers has changed. Through more practical technologies, such as cellphones, laptops, and tablets, they are just a click away to connect with companies over the internet.

Realizing this new consumer behavior, brands uncovered the need to ensure a digital presence in order to conquer new audiences. As a result of this migration, there was a need to have digital marketing strategies to capture customers, and the collection of user information is among the most used strategies to generate conversions.

However, the LGPD was sanctioned in 2018 to make sure that this data collected by companies (whether an email, CPF, or telephone number) was stored and used securely and transparently.

Since its announcement, it has been widely discussed among companies how to adapt to the rules established by law, as the impact on data processing is enormous for companies to create their communication strategies and protect personal data effectively.

Companies that have not yet adapted to the LGPD are subject to fines of R$ 50 million, which would bring huge losses to any company.

Keep reading the text and answer all your questions about the LGPD and how it can impact your company.

The Emergence of LGPD

 Law No. 13.709/2018, popularly known as LGPD (General Data Protection Law) ended up entering into force in 2018. It was created so that the personal data made available to companies became even more secure, that is, collected and stored efficiently.

In a practical way, it is known that this law offers users power over their data. That is, it can define how companies can dispose of their sensitive data, and how they should be treated. Furthermore, these users can simply deny sharing their information as they are not obligated to do so.

Following the LGPD’s practical line, users should be aware of the use and handling of their personal information by the companies that collected it. Also, users can choose to remove their data from the database of such companies.

The rules established by the LGPD apply to the following types of data:

• Personal data: those that identify an individual, for example, individual taxpayer ID, telephone, full name, address, e-mail address, photograph, IP address, among others.
• Sensitive data: they refer to information about a specific person that may lead him or her to suffer discrimination or prejudice. For example, sexual orientation, ethnicity, political ideologies, religious beliefs, among others.

The data can be obtained both physically and digitally, and in both cases, they will be covered by the protection offered by the law. Therefore, when collecting such information, it is also important to have consent to use it.

Concerning sensitive data, it is worth mentioning that they can only be collected if there is an explicit authorization from the holder and should only be used for a defined purpose, which can also be called legitimate interest.

All legal institutions and establishments, whether public or private, that use data from third parties, customers, or even employees must comply with the LGPD.

However, before you put measures in place to regulate your company, it is important to know the 10 privacy principles that LGPD requires from companies, which are:

1. Principle of Purpose: inform the purpose of collecting data from the user.
2. Principle of Adequacy: the data will have to be processed in a way that makes sense with the purpose that was informed to the holder.
3. Principle of Need: request only the information necessary for the fulfillment of its purpose.
4. Principle of Free Access: give assurance to the personal data holder that they can know the form and duration for which their data will be used.
5. Principle of Data Quality: the company will be responsible for the quality of provided data.
6. Principle of Transparency: the user must receive a notice with a detailed list of how their personal data can be used. 
7. Principle of Security:  a company must have the means to ensure that only authorized people have access to such data.
8. Principle of Prevention: data cannot be shared with other companies or people not authorized to process it.
9. Principle of Non-discrimination: data cannot be used for illegal purposes.

• Principle of Accountability: it is necessary to have the term that ensures the 10 principles are being followed.

To ensure the integrity of personal data, your information security team must contribute a lot, since fully protecting personal data is required for the company to have efficient privileged access control.

One that allows only authorized people to access the information and ensures the security from any internal or external threat, in addition to recording all types of actions taken on personal data.

The European GDPR as inspiration for the Brazilian LGPD

There is a European law, popularly known as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). It was from there that the LGPD based its main premises regarding the security of data and shared user information.

The GDPR is the updated version of another European Union privacy law, called the “Data Protection Directive”, which has been in force since 1995. The GDPR has legal protection and the Data Protection Directive is just a guide for good practices.

The European Union considers the protection of personal data as a right of any person living or being within the European territory. Therefore, if the person is a Brazilian and is in Europe, their data will be secured by the GDPR just because they are on European soil.

The LGPD complements the Civil Rights Framework for the Internet (Law 12.965 / 14) and comes to light at a moment marked by large leaks of information that involve the misuse of personal information.

In general terms, the two pieces of legislation are very similar, since both deal with the Privacy issue, defining the protection of personal data present in corporate databases.

The main proposal is that the individual’s right to know what information they provide to the services they use is fulfilled. In addition, the entity must explain why it requests certain data from the customer, and for what purpose they will be used.

Despite the similarity, the Brazilian legislation has some more specific items. Here are seven important details about the rights guaranteed to Brazilians:

1. Be informed of the collection and sharing of your data whenever it occurs;
2. Full access to your data, including the possibility of correcting them;
3. Request that your data stay anonymous;
4. Guarantee of data blocking or deletion;
5. Have the option of disallowing cookies when accessing a website and receiving information stating that this compromises the browsing performance and customization;
6. Request the interruption of communications and rest assured it is respected;
7. Review automatic algorithmic decisions about your data, with the right to request human review.

LGPD was created to help maintain the protection of personal data by ensuring the integrity of user information and its security. Each citizen must be aware of the real importance of their data and how making it available can impact both their life and the life of others. 

Each user and citizen must know their rights, if they are victims of crimes virtually committed by Brazilians or foreigners. In addition, when verifying the violation of its data by companies, whether foreign or not, the user has the right to seek its defense supported by the LGPD.

The Impact of LGPD on Brazilian Companies

Looking at the business side, these new processes guided by the Law will insist that businesses be extremely careful and meticulous about the terms of use of the respective data. Therefore, brands need to explain very well all forms of use in relation to the information provided by users. Not to mention that these businesses must also promote actions so that the user can manage their information.

In order for these activities to be carried out efficiently, and above all, in accordance with the guidelines imposed by the LGPD, each company must pay attention to the main rules it guides regarding the collected data.

What has happened a lot in the business world is that brands have hired professionals to deal specifically with these processes, making the internal sectors that need the personal data of customers and leads to be able to work even more securely, and within the law.

The new law provides guidelines on how the processing of collected data should work and it is extremely important to guarantee its security. See what your company needs to do by August to adapt itself:

1. Hiring a Data Protection Officer

For data to be handled correctly, some organizations will need to appoint someone to take charge of processing personal data.

The main duties of this role will be:

• Working as an intermediary between the company and the data holder, facilitating communication between both parties and responding to the holder’s complaints and requests.
• Establishing the connection between the corporation and the government, receiving instructions from the ANPD (National Data Protection Authority), and taking care that they are complied with.
• Ensuring that employees follow the rules set forth by the LGPD, and for this, they will provide training and guidance to handle data appropriately.
• Following the attributions established by the controller and executing complementary norms that the organization decides to use to guarantee the security of information.

2. Analysis of Data Protection and Privacy

It is essential to review the current privacy and protection policy and make any necessary adjustments. The holder needs to be aware of how their data will be used and what safeguards are guaranteed to decide whether to provide it or not.

Make a strategic plan and check all the controls and processes of your company looking for solutions to risk situations. Possible security gaps should be looked for in order to minimize the risk of loss, theft, or hijacking of information.

With the adoption of the LGPD, it is crucial to adopt administrative and technical measures that are effective in protecting information. For example, to protect your company from data theft, it is possible to use software such as senhasegura.

3. Training of Employees

In order for the LGPD rules to be followed by all employees, it is important to invest time and resources in training. To achieve this goal, one can offer courses, lectures, among others.

Employees need to understand how they can prevent leaks and know their responsibilities and consequences.

In addition, some data is restricted to certain sectors, and their members must understand this and be committed to the information in their hands for not sharing it with third parties.

In times of pandemic, when many workers have joined the remote work approach, it is interesting to guide how to maintain security during activities.

The adoption of data protection measures must become part of the collective and individual thinking of all employees, becoming part of the corporate culture too.

4. Beware of partners and outsourcing

Those who are partners of your business or provide outsourced services also need to adapt to the LGPD.

The contracts with suppliers and third parties that have access to your company’s information need to be reviewed to ensure that they comply with internal and external data privacy rules.

It is necessary that partner ventures also have a culture of privacy and security so that problems do not arise in the future and for your company to remain within the risk limit previously established.

The Key Challenges Faced for Compliance

Promoting a digital transformation through information security and LGPD is still a challenge. Citizens must be prepared to exercise their citizenship in this context and have information at their disposal to support them. 

In addition, experts assume that the State should treat the matter with caution, since the maximum tightening of this regulation, disregarding its effects in other countries, can lead to international isolation from the rest of the world. 

All these perspectives would imply less foreign investment and a weakening of negotiations and international relations between countries and companies, generating a strong impact in several areas, mainly in the economy. 

Therefore, it is expected that Brazil will advance in the race for leadership and autonomy of global information, treating the subject wisely within its own premises and transforming it into a State policy.

Fines for Those Who Do Not Comply With It

The data law fines began to be enforced on August 1, 2021. Check some of the sanctions for those who break the LGPD rules:

• Fine of up to 2% of the company’s revenue, which may reach the amount of R$ 50 million for an infraction committed.
• Partial suspension of the database operation for a period of up to 6 months with the possibility of an extension for an equal period.
• Suspension of the activity of processing personal data for up to 6 months with the possibility of an extension for an equal period.
• Partial or total prohibition of activities that deal with data processing.

So that you do not suffer losses, make sure that the LGPD rules begin to be complied with by your business.

Think about what changes your company needs to make. For example, if someone tried to break into your company’s database in search of personal data from your customers or employees, would it really be secure?

The Importance of Protecting Personal Data

For the states, it is a matter of extreme relevance to ensure the protection of citizens and enhance the economy and technology of the country through the flow and processing of information. 

For companies, keeping customer data restricted to the corporation itself and inside local servers is a very high expense, so many of them resort to cloud data storage, such as cloud computing, to ensure the storage of a large amount of data. It is in this transfer to the cloud that companies can leave their own data and customers vulnerable. 

Therefore, they need to invest in security layers, choose data management solutions, such as Privileged Access Management (PAM), and count on the support of legislation to ensure the security of the company and customers. 

From the point of view of users and citizens, without a protection policy, in addition to running the risk of having their data widely used for commercial and governmental purposes without proper consent, they are more vulnerable to cybercrimes that can go unpunished, except in cases they take place in the national territory.

Privileged Access Management as a Path to LGPD Compliance

Now that you had an overview of what LGPD is and what requirements are expected from companies and institutions, it is time to understand more about privileged access management.

It is important to mention that these new precautions are provided for in articles 46 and 49 of the new law, mentioning the importance of administrative controls to protect personal data collected via the internet.

The first step to ensuring your company is compliant with this law is to have a mechanism that is able to map and configure each employee’s access. After all, there is information that should not be accessed by all people and needs to remain available only for the sectors and teams that need it.

Thus, everyone must be encouraged to only access the information that is relevant to the performance of their daily activities, without access abuse or improper sharing of information. This is what we call the Principle of Least Privilege.

Always reviewing the accesses and users who should have access to certain data is also a way to ensure that your company is following the step-by-step as expected.

This way, it is easier to see if there are employees who are breaking any of the rules and why the amount of access is still higher than expected.

To assist in this routine, many institutions started to work with user logging, capable of mapping which people accessed certain information and how often this data was viewed.

Another important point that should not be left out is the inclusion or deletion of an employee when they start or leave the company. This is a common mistake that many institutions end up making without thinking about the legal consequences.

senhasegura, Your PAM Solution

These regulations related to data privacy are very positive because they seek to bring a balance between the protection of personal data, the dignity of a human being, the privacy, honor, and the image of people, as well as free initiative and economic use of data in a legitimate, responsible, proportional and reasonable way.

In order to comply with the two regulations, technological solutions such as senhasegura, a management solution for privileged access, which automates all access management of privileged users, including the recording of sessions for later auditing, among other features, are fundamental for the success of a data management strategy.

Pam solutions help corporations alleviate and avoid business losses and financial penalties. In many organizations, system administrators receive full superuser rights with little supervision. 

The absence of proper access governance for privileged accounts leads to an accumulation of privilege abuses, orphan accounts, ownership conflicts, and other governance issues.

Organizations need to go beyond password compartmentalization methods and static policies to restrict and monitor privileged access. A good way to solve this effectively is by hiring a PAM solution. A  good PAM solution manages all the points you need to pay attention to, ensures internal and external security, and even records all actions performed within the databases.

Gartner, one of the most respected IT research and consulting companies in the world, highlights senhasegura as one of the best PAM solutions in the world market in its report called Critical Capabilities for PAM, which evaluates PAM technology and its ability to execute and provide the functionalities needed for the cybersecurity universe.

If you are interested in learning how a PAM solution works, contact us and request a demo!