Threats to US Election Security Grow More Complex Top U.S. election security officials say protecting the nation’s voting systems has become increasingly challenging. Insider threats are a growing concern and could undermine serious strides made to secure voting systems —… Read More

The Developing “Avoided Costs” Remedy in Trade Secret Litigation Should a defendant found liable for stealing trade secrets have to fork over all of the research and development costs it theoretically avoided by misappropriating the secrets? Yes, according to the… Read More

Protecting Trade Secrets in Remote and Hybrid Workplaces: 3 Questions Employers Should Be Asking Themselves Employers today are coming to terms with what has developed into full-time remote or hybrid work arrangements for many workers. However, you should recognize that… Read More

Cisco Talos Tracks Insider Attack Surge The Cisco Talos intelligence group over the past year saw an increase in incidents involving insider threats such as malicious insiders and unwitting assets, and is recommending organization’s add social engineering to their policies,… Read More

5 Ways to Mitigate Your New Insider Threats in the Great Resignation Companies are in the midst of an employee “turnover tsunami” with no signs of a slowdown. According to Fortune Magazine, 40% of the U.S. is considering quitting their… Read More

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Nuclear Security Culture: Insider Threat Assessments at Nuclear Facilities In an ever-changing environment, risk takes on a more fluid form. Pinning down who or what is a threat in the U.S. nuclear space becomes more… Read More

The Difference Between Insider Risk and Insider Threats The difference between an insider risk and an insider threat is relatively straightforward: insider risks are anyone who has access to sensitive data. Insider risks do not necessarily have malicious intent—it can… Read More

Tangibly Announces $1.3 Million in Funding from Wilson Sonsini and Madrona for Platform to Help Companies Protect their Most Important IP Assets – Trade Secrets Tangibly, a trade secret management platform, announced today a pre-seed financing of $1.3M with participation… Read More

Department of Defense Selects Torch.AI for New Cyber and Insider Threat System Torch.AI has revealed that the Department of Defense (DOD) has selected the company’s software for a new cyber and insider threat analysis capability, the System for Insider Threat… Read More

5 Data Security Challenges Enterprises Face Today Data has become the lifeblood of the enterprise, providing competitive differentiation, customer insights and product ideas. With the plummeting costs of storage, sensors and compute, the typical organization is eagerly accumulating more and… Read More

Spanish Police Arrest Alleged Radioactive Monitoring Hackers Police in Spain have arrested two people on suspicion of hacking the country’s Radioactivity Alert Network (RAR). The RAR, operated by Spain’s General Directorate of Civil Protection and Emergencies, is a network of… Read More

Experts Discuss How to Protect Top-Secret Information from Insider Risks There are four critical issues that impact insider risk management today, said Shaw: pandemic-related stressors, social identity stress, the rise of conspiracy theories, and new policies and practices that monitor… Read More

Treating Healthcare’s Insider Threat According to reports from last week coming out of DataBreaches.net, Phoenixville Hospital in Pennsylvania and Cheyenne Regional Medical Center in Wyoming both experienced incidents of employees accessing patient data that they were unauthorized to view. In… Read More

HackerOne Incident Raises Concerns for Insider Threats In a blog post Friday, HackerOne disclosed a security incident involving an employee who took advantage of the platform’s coordinated vulnerability disclosure program for financial gain. A call on June 22 from a… Read More

Trade Secrets and Patents: A Great IP Combo It is not as simple to say — trade secret or patent. In fact, trade secrets and patents can work together to ensure companies the broadest possible protection — and increase your… Read More

MITRE’s Inside-R Protect Goes Deep into the Behavior Side of Insider Threats Insider threat and risk management programs are the Achilles heel of every corporate and information security program, as many a CISO can attest to. The MITRE Inside-R Protect… Read More

Espionage, Profiling and Economic Control Mark Chinese Commercial Companies A two-year crackdown on Chinese entities by enforcement agencies have revealed a web of companies and individuals indulging in espionage, profiling of high value idividuals, large-scale tax evasion and exfiltration of… Read More

7 Best Practices for Trade Secrets Protection Many companies across the globe owe their success to some kind of a trade secret. Whether it’s a special ingredient in a grandma’s recipe, a unique knitting technique, or a closed-source software tool,… Read More

How to Counter Insider Threats in the Software Supply Chain The risks associated with insider threats grow as the software supply chain extends to partners, third-party contractors and freelancers. Once data and users move past an organization’s development and support… Read More

Why Data Protection is the First Step to Mitigating Insider Risk Much is written about the corporate threat from shadowy remote hackers. A cybercrime economy worth trillions has certainly made this disparate bunch of financially motivated threat actors a major… Read More

Chinese Hackers Cast Wide Net for Trade Secrets in US, Europe and Asia, Researchers Say Chinese government-linked hackers have tried to steal sensitive data from some three dozen manufacturing and technology firms in the US, Europe and Asia, security researchers… Read More

The Super Malicious Insider and the Rise of Insider Threats The risks from insiders can be classified in three ways. Basic insider risk, of course, covers 100% of users, any of whom could fall for a phishing attack, accidentally expose… Read More

How to Stop New Employees from Becoming Insider Threats A recent Forrester Research study commissioned by Imperva, “Insider Threats Drive Data Protection Improvements: Threat Detection, Analytics, and Staffing Lead Investment Priorities” revealed that in 2022, nearly half of all organizations… Read More

Insider Threats Reverberate Throughout the Financial Industry Amid the Great Resignation The recent news that Cash App’s investing unit fell victim to insider attack not only affected the customers of that financial application. It served as a reminder of how… Read More

The Root Cause of Insider Threats Rests with the Company Itself An insider threat refers to any form of malicious threat presented to an organization that arises from people within the organization. This includes current employees, former employees, contractors or… Read More

Over Half of Data Security Incidents Caused by Insiders The security vendor commissioned Forrester to interview over 150 security and IT professionals in the region as part of a wider study: Insider Threats Drive Data Protection Improvements. It found that… Read More

Leading Laboratory Interrupts Insider Threat Using Darktrace Artifical Intelligence Darktrace, a global leader in cyber security AI, today announced that a leading laboratory specializing in in vitro diagnostics successfully stopped an insider threat with the help of Darktrace’s self-learning AI…. Read More

MITRE and Partners Build Insider Threat Knowledge Base Is the time right for a unified lexicon of known tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP) used by insiders who opt to break trust with their employers? MITRE thinks so and has positioned… Read More

Identity Attacks Threaten Workloads, Not Just Humans The pandemic pushed companies to accelerate their adoption of cloud services, infrastructure, and workloads to support a growing remote workforce, but the shift has redefined who represents an insider threat — nearly anyone,… Read More

A Locked Room Mystery: How Cleared Companies can Protect Against Insider Threats What can we do to protect against such insider threats? Take the case of Sergey Alenikov. He downloaded vast amounts of computer codes, proprietary to his American company…. Read More

Durham’s Filing: Lessons Here on Insider Threats at the Highest Level Insiders are a pervasive threat. A recent 2022 report by a company specializing in insider risk revealed that there was a 72 percent increase in insider incidents with 42… Read More

Great Resignation Shines a Spotlight on Insider Threats As the so-called Great Resignation seems still to be in full swing, one critical topic is often left out of conversations — cybersecurity concerns specific to the employee exodus. However, security practitioners… Read More

The New Insider Threat: Are Ransomware Groups Recruiting your Employees? Every organization knows that the threat of ransomware is real, and despite best efforts to keep cybercriminals out, successful attacks continue to make daily headlines. Now, every user account –… Read More

Ransomware Gangs Increase Efforts to Enlist Insiders for Attacks A recent survey of 100 large (over 5,000 employees) North American IT firms shows that ransomware actors are making greater effort to recruit insiders in targeted firms to aid in attacks…. Read More

With Cloud the Norm, Insiders are Everywhere — and Pose Greater Risk Organizations dealing with insider threats spent $15.4 million on average during 2021, a 34% increase from 2020, and required 85 days to contain each incident, according to a… Read More

Three Recent Events Prove the Need for an Insider Risk Playbook Every company, regardless of size, should have an insider risk management playbook in place to address the insider threat. The human factor is always in play, mistakes will happen… Read More

Insider Threats are a Quiet Risk in your System According to the Verizon 2020 Data Breach report, insiders account for 22% of all security incidents. In addition, the costs of insider breaches – caused either by human error or bad… Read More

31 Insider Threat Stats You Need to Know in 2022 Insider threats are present in companies all over the world. If you have any type of valuable information and you work with other people, then your company could fall victim… Read More

How Do I Reduce the Risk of an Insider Threat? Having a framework to provide the least level of access (a core tenet of the best zero-trust models) is a good start to reducing the risk of an insider threat…. Read More

Is Insider Risk Threatening Your Growth and Innovation? Insider risk is any user-driven data exposure event, either malicious, negligent, or accidental in nature. Within your organization, think about all the files that have been uploaded, downloaded, synced, and shared across… Read More

Interview: A Day in the Life of a Threat Hunter A threat hunter works to defend estates and networks by understanding how they might be attacked. By thinking and behaving like an attacker, hunters actively engage in defense by understanding… Read More

Ontario Bans Employee Non-Competition Agreements: What does this Mean for Trade Secret Protection? On December 2, 2021, Ontario’s Bill 27, Working for Workers Act, 2021 [PDF], received Royal Assent, making Ontario the first jurisdiction in Canada to ban non-competition agreements,… Read More

How Remote Work Makes Financial Insider Threats a Bigger Challenge Now more than ever, insider threats pose a serious risk to financial institutions, especially those that have transitioned to alternate work environments to ensure business continuity, warns Fortinet. Fortinet’s 2020… Read More

Four Insider Threats Putting Every Company At Risk Few concerns keep business leaders up at night like the threat of a cybersecurity incident. With the average cost of a data breach exceeding $4 million for the first time and public… Read More

#IRISSCON: 12 Ways to Defend and Respond to Cyber-Attacks Effectively Best practices to defend and respond to cyber-attacks, drawing on analogies with the COVID-19 pandemic, were set out by Brian Honan, CEO, BH Consulting, during this week’s IRISSCON 2021. Honan… Read More

How to Protect Trade Secrets in Remote Working World The protection of trade secrets has always been vital to maintaining a successful business, particularly as companies innovate and use technology in creative ways to obtain a competitive edge in manufacturing… Read More

Solving the People Problem: Insider Risk and Trust Over the past two years, most organizations have gone from “full steam ahead” on digital transformation to “operation warp speed.” CIOs are charged with super-fast-tracking this digital enablement and fostering cultures rooted… Read More

How Disinformation Creates Insider Threats As we enter quarter four of 2021, the idea of disinformation as a cyber threat probably hasn’t percolated to the forefront of concerns of many CISOs. Indeed, a Venn diagram would show no overlap of… Read More

The Biggest Cyber-Threat Isn’t Hackers, It’s Insider Threats Insider threats are negligent or malicious activities carried out by employees, contractors, or associates in an organization. Insider threats are any cybersecurity hazard and vulnerability that arise either due to employees’ maliciousness… Read More

Hackers Claim to Have Stolen 60 GB of Data From Acer The hackers shared a link to a sample of the stolen data and they promised to leak more once they have analyzed it. They also published a video showing… Read More

Four Insider Threats Putting Every Company at Risk Few concerns keep business leaders up at night like the threat of a cybersecurity incident. With the average cost of a data breach exceeding $4 million for the first time. With public… Read More

Insider Threat: A Simple Tool to Reduce the Liability As the National Counterintelligence and Security Center’s National Insider Threat Awareness Month (NITAM) nears its conclusion, it is appropriate to highlight the importance of training in every Field Security Officer’s (FSO)… Read More

Tim Cook Says Employees Who Leak Memos do not Belong at Apple, According to Leaked Memo Tim Cook sent an email to Apple employees Tuesday evening about an all-hands meeting that leaked to The Verge last week. He said the… Read More

Massachusetts AG Launches Probe into T-Mobile Data Breach The attorney general of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, has announced a probe into the recent data breach suffered by American telecommunications company T-Mobile. In August, the United States wireless carrier disclosed a data… Read More

  Personal Information of Nearly 80,000 MyRepublic Customers Accessed After Breach The personal data of approximately 80,000 MyRepublic mobile subscribers was accessed without authorization last month. The unauthorized access reportedly affected 79,388 mobile subscribers based in Singapore. The customer data… Read More

53% find it difficult to prevent an insider attack during data aggregation Recent data from the Ponemon Institute and DTEX found that 53% of companies find it impossible or very difficult to prevent an insider attack when data is being… Read More

Former CEO and COO Of JHL Biotech Convicted of Conspiracy to Steal Trade Secrets and Commit Wire Fraud Exceeding $101 Million According to the plea agreement, Jordanov hired former Genentech employees to work at JHL Biotech, several of whom he… Read More

FBI warns Big Tech that Chinese or Russian employees could be coerced into SPYING by enemies putting pressure on their families The FBI has warned tech firms that employees with ties to China and Russia may be spying on them… Read More

Guarding Against the Human Element: How Insider-Threat Trends Should Guide Cybersecurity Policy  The number of data breaches has increased every year for more than a decade. Each incident costs companies time, money and resources to repair while inflicting often-irreparable damage to their… Read More

“Our IT teams have an Incident Response Plan. We’re prepared for a cyberattack.” Maybe not. Phishing attacks, insider threats, denial of service disruptions, malware and ransomware — cybersecurity incidents like these happen on a daily basis. For most of these… Read More

Insider Risk Caused by Data Exposure and Leaks Siphons Vast Revenue From Organizations  As companies emerge from the pandemic, and 40% of employees are planning to switch jobs, corporate data is at risk. Files are being uploaded, shared, synced and emailed by employees as a… Read More

 **ITMG Insider Threat Cases – Archive  If We Don’t Secure People, Information Security Will Remain a Pipe Dream  As we’ve written previously on Lawfare, businesses are on the frontline of an intense geopolitical competition. Their assets—like innovative technologies, complex research and development, and data—are… Read More

 **ITMG Insider Threat Cases – Archive  ‘Be aware’: The Pentagon’s target list for extremist infiltrators — right and left  An internal “training module” singles out a range of groups, ideologies and symbols seen as primary insider threats.They are all signs that extremists… Read More

Sky Global Executive and Associate Indicted for Providing Encrypted Communication Devices to Help SAN DIEGO – A federal grand jury today returned an indictment against the Chief Executive Officer and an associate of the Canada-based firm Sky Global on charges… Read More

Beyond Economic Espionage Much of the reporting on nation-state threat activity is focused on the latest cyber intrusion, such as the SolarWinds intrusion or the intrusion of numerous coronavirus vaccine developers. These intrusions are often breathlessly portrayed as brazen and… Read More

Heavier Criminal Penalties for Chinese Intellectual Property Infringement Kick in March 1, 2021 On December 26, 2020, the Twenty-Fourth Meeting of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People’s Congress of China voted to pass the “Amendment to the Criminal… Read More

Biden administration files appeal pressing for Assange extradition The administration of US President Joe Biden has appealed a British judge’s ruling against the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a Justice Department official said Friday. A brief filed late Thursday… Read More

UK judge to rule on US extradition for WikiLeaks’ Assange WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will find out Monday whether he can be extradited from the U.K. to the U.S. to face espionage charges over the publication of secret American military… Read More

On Sunday, the Trump administration confirmed that a group of hackers working at the behest of a foreign government had infiltrated several key government networks. While the government involved hasn’t been confirmed officially as of this point, many analysts have… Read More

FireEye, a Top Cybersecurity Firm, Says It Was Hacked by a Nation-State The Silicon Valley company said hackers — almost certainly Russian — made off with tools that could be used to mount new attacks around the world. For years,… Read More

Energy Espionage is Threatening the Renewable Boom At the height of the shale boom, the Eagle Ford was a spy den on the level of Beirut.  Industrial espionage was in full swing, with foreign governments and foreign companies dying to… Read More

Advice diary: Digital forensics thwarts insider threat ransom attempt Michael Quinn, managing director in the Cyber Risk practice of Kroll, a division of Duff & Phelps, recounts a case in which his team thwarted a ransom attempt on a global… Read More

Remote Insider Data Theft Worries Financial Industry As the pandemic rages on, more companies are concerned about the growing risk of insider theft. Remote work has changed the cybersecurity landscape and has required IT and security staff to rethink where… Read More

Organizational cybersecurity is difficult to achieve, especially in today’s business environment. With remote work becoming increasingly common, achieving true organizational resilience needs to become a top priority for security professionals and anyone involved with the development and execution of insider… Read More

Protecting Company Data From Disaster CHICAGO — The United States has seen so many hurricanes this season that experts have run through the alphabetical naming convention and are using the Greek alphabet to identify the remaining storms. Meanwhile, wild fires… Read More

71% Of Healthcare Organizations Are More Concerned About Insider Threats Now Than Before The Pandemic Netwrix report reveals that concern about the risks of data theft by employees and IT admin mistakes has soared since the pandemic. Netwrix conducted this… Read More

Controversial Plan Urges DoD to Recruit Tech Pros to WFH The United States Defense Innovation Board (DIB) has recommended that the Pentagon hire civilians to work from home who can handle classified information as a way of attracting people with… Read More

Shopify breach: Help center employees are a unique breed of insider threat A data breach at Shopify perpetrated by two “rogue employees” who worked on the e-commerce platform’s support team illustrates how certain roles within an organization may require more… Read More

No Internal Investigation Is Complete Without ESI When allegations of employee misconduct are alleged, companies must respond swiftly. Indeed, “insider threats” can cause significant damage to a company. These threats come in many different forms, including: Accounting fraud; Theft of… Read More

Edward Snowden ‘Surprised’ By Trump Weighing Pardon, Asks Him to Clear Others Charged With Leaks Mr. Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who admittedly leaked classified material to the media in 2013, told MSNBC he was surprised when the president recently… Read More

September is National Insider Threat Awareness Month The National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) and the National Insider Threat Task Force (NITTF) have declared September 2020 as Insider Threat Month. Given the plethora of cases involving insiders of late, the… Read More

Federal Spending on Insider Threat Detection Tech Could Surpass $1B in FY 2020 The federal insider threat technology market is expected to exceed $1B in fiscal year 2020 driven by agencies’ spending on cybersecurity tools and services designed to detect… Read More

Why Having a Secure Remote Environment is More Critical Today Than Ever Before New threats emerge all the time. Here’s how to stop them. Recent events have exposed a number of kinks in the armor of enterprise-level cybersecurity the world… Read More

Security Officers Now Require a More Comprehensive Insider Threat Solution COVID-19 has initiated a whole new host of cybersecurity threats. Twitter was one of the latest victims, its employees allegedly being targeted so that hackers should take over the accounts… Read More

Twitter VIP Account Hack Highlights the Danger of Insider Threats Most companies are putting a lot of effort into making sure their network perimeters are secure against remote attacks, but they don’t pay the same level of attention to threats… Read More

Security pros say the Twitter hack highlights how a simple combination of phishing and ‘insider threats’ is the biggest security risk companies need to worry about Top cybersecurity experts say Wednesday must be seen as a major wakeup call at… Read More

From the Chartroom: The Cost of China’s Intellectual-Property Theft Imagine if pirates were sailing up and down America’s coasts, plundering treasure worth between 0.9 percent and 2.6 percent of U.S. GDP every year. Amid the partisan rancor of today’s politics,… Read More

CIA Cyber Weapons Stolen in Historic Breach Due to ‘Woefully Lax Security’, Internal Report Says The largest theft of data in CIA history happened because a specialized unit within the agency was so focused on building cyber weapons that an… Read More

Here’s What That Capital One Court Decision Means for Corporate Cybersecurity Typically, hacked organizations are able to keep incident response reports private, and avoid costly suits, by shielding the details under attorney-client privilege. Not under a recent decision in a… Read More

Protecting from Insider Threats in the Transportation Sector When it comes to security, cyber or otherwise, often the people you trust can become threats. Insider threats to transportation have moved front and center at the Transportation Security Administration. It’s published… Read More

Press Release: Company announces significant increase in insider threat management consulting engagements in the last 12 months, including the addition of four new Fortune 100 clients. Washington, DC – ITMG, the leading insider threat management firm who has provided consulting and training… Read More

ITMG is growing and we’re looking for bona fide insider threat professionals. If you’re an experienced analyst, investigator, or program manager with experience in the insider threat domain, we’d love to hear from you. We’re currently seeking experienced analysts and… Read More