f you have been following some of our posts, you probably realize that we don’t advocate security for the sake of security. Nor do we like to do compliance for the sake of compliance though you may not have much choice there if the compliance requirements are mandated by external regulations such as industry regulations (e.g. PCI DSS, NERC CIP etc.) or government regulations (e.g. HIPAA, GLBA, SOX etc.). On the other hand, we think that every investment in security projects or operations (beyond what is required for routine business support) must be justifiable in terms of the risk(s) that we are trying to mitigate or eliminate. And the allocation of IT resources and budgets must be prioritized by risk level which in turn requires every IT organization to conduct periodic risk assessments  and rank the risks by severity.  This probably sounds all too obvious but we still see a lot of security purchasing decisions being made that are not based on formal risk assessments or discernable risk-aligned  priorities. BTW, I talk about the quality of risk assessments in another post.

In this post, I would like to go over some “real” numbers on insider threats, as we know from a few recent survey reports. More importantly, I’ll cover how Access Governance and Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) can be effective safeguards in mitigating risks from insider threats.  If you are not up to speed on what Access Governance (sometimes also referred to as Access Assurance) includes, I would point you here (may need registration).  For SIEM, I would point you here.

It probably needs an explanation as to why I chose Access Governance and SIEM for this discussion. Insider threats, by definition, are caused by people  (employers, contractors, partners etc.) whose identity is known to the organization and have been provided some level of access to one or more of the organization’s information systems.  Access Governance can be both an effective detective control (through access reviews) and preventative control (through role based access provisioning and access remediation) for user access. SIEM can be an effective control for detecting anomalous, suspicious  or  unauthorized user activities. When properly integrated, Access Governance and SIEM  solutions can help achieve substantial reduction of risks from insider threats.

Below is a discussion of findings related to insider threats from recent reports. Also provided are notes on how effective implementations of Access Governance and SIEM processes or technologies can be useful safeguards against these threats. I use findings from three recent reports for the analysis – 2010 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), 2010 CyberSecurity Watch Survey (CSWS)and Securosis 2010 Data Security Survey (SDSS).

Size and significance of Insider Threats

Report	Finding
DBIR	48% of all breaches were attributed to internal agents
CSWS	“The most costly or damaging attacks are more often caused by insiders (employees or contractors with authorized access)” “It is alarming that although most of the top 15 security policies and procedures from the survey are aimed at preventing insider attacks, 51% of respondents who experienced a cyber security event were still victims of an insider attack. This number is holding constant with the previous two surveys (2007 and 2006) Insider incidents are more costly than external breaches, according to 67% of respondents
SDSS	Among respondents who knew of data breaches in their own organizations, 62 percent said malicious intentions were behind them. Insider breaches comprised 33 percent of incidents, hackers comprised 29 percent, and the remaining breaches were accidental.

As one can infer from these findings, insider threats are the cause of at least as many security breaches as external threats. It also appears that the cost of breaches caused by internal threats could be higher than those caused by external threats.

Intentional Vs Accidental

Report	Finding
DBIR	90% of these internal agents’ caused breaches were the result of deliberate and malicious activity.
CSWS	Insiders most commonly expose private or sensitive information unintentionally, gain unauthorized access to/use of information systems or networks and steal intellectual property
SDSS	Among respondents who knew of data breaches in their own organizations, 62 percent said malicious intentions were behind them. Insider breaches comprised 33 percent of incidents, hackers comprised 29 percent, and the remaining breaches were accidental.

It appears from the findings that insiders could be causing breaches intentionally more often than accidentally. Access Governance can help reduce malicious insider risk  by enforcing “least privilege” user access and “segregation of duties” through role based access provisioning, access reviews and remediation of improper access. On the other hand, a properly implemented SIEM solution can be an effective deterrent (as a detective control) to malicious insider threats by logging user activities, correlation of user activities and alerting on suspicious activities by the user. By suitable integration of SIEM and Access Governance solutions, it is possible to analyze user activities (obtained from SIEM) against a user’s role in the organization and hence what the user is authorized to do (obtained from Access Governance).

Cause and prevention

Report	Finding
DBIR	51% of these internal agents’ caused breaches involves regular users or employees, 12% involved accounting or finance staff and 12% involved network or systems administrators “In general, employees are granted more privileges than they need to perform their job duties and the activities of those that do require higher privileges are usually not monitored in any real way.” “Across all types of internal agents and crimes, we found that 24% was perpetrated by employees who recently underwent some kind of job change. Half of those had been fired, some had resigned, some were newly hired, and a few changed roles within the organization.” “With respect to breaches caused by recently terminated employees, we observed the same scenarios we have in the past: 1) the employee’s accounts were not disabled in a timely manner, and   2) the employee was allowed to “finish the day” as usual after being notified of termination. This obviously speaks to the need for termination plans that are timely and encompass all areas of access (decommissioning accounts, disabling privileges, escorting terminated employees, forensic analysis of systems, etc.)”
CSWS	“The most costly or damaging attacks are more often caused by insiders (employees or contractors with authorized access)” “It is alarming that although most of the top 15 security policies and procedures from the survey are aimed at preventing insider attacks, 51% of respondents who experienced a cyber security event were still victims of an insider attack. This number is holding constant with the previous two surveys (2007 and 2006)

The DBIR findings clearly illustrate the need for organizations to enforce least privilege access through business need-to-know (managing user access based on a user’s role), periodic review of user access (access reviews and certification) and prompt remediation of improper user access.  Access Governance solutions can help achieve these objectives effectively as well as efficiently.

The CSWS finding seems to suggest a problem with the enforcement of organization’s policies related to user access.  As mentioned above, a properly implemented Access Governance program and solution can help with effective enforcement of user access policies.

To conclude, it is obvious that risk management of insider threats needs to be a key focus area of any Information Security  or Risk Management program. An effective Access Governance and SIEM program can help with significant mitigation of the insider risk.