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An insider threat is a malicious threat to an organization that comes from people within the organization, such as employees, former employees, contra...
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Internal Threats to Network Security The topic of network security is a reoccurring theme in today’s business world. There is an almost unfathomable amount of data generated, transmitted, and stored every day. Unfortunately the media and traditional reporting sources these days typically only focus on outside threats such as hackers. Many people completely overlook the insider threats that are present and can potentially pose and even bigger threat then any outside source. One of the acronyms that is constantly repeated in the security industry is the principle of CIA or confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Authorized users, whether by accident or through malicious acts, are in a unique position to threaten all three aspects of CIA. Authorized users by their very nature are allowed access to the company’s data to varying degrees. If access rights are not correctly set, then there is a huge potential for data to become compromised, corrupted, or destroyed. Employee access does not stop at electronic access to data but many employees will have a great amount of physical access to networking hardware and devices. The potential for damage or theft from employees is a risk that must not be overlooked. If that is not bad enough it is not just data theft and corruption that you must worry about but what user choose to store. Your company can get in trouble by simply storing copyrighted or pornographic material. Users are also notorious for leaving passwords written down in close proximity to their devices. Some users take this a step further and keep a list of a rotation of all the passwords they use. Passwords also present another weak link in the fact that they can be shared between users, or given out durin... ... middle of paper ... ...hether it is voluntary or involuntary a procedure must be in place and executed every time to ensure that network credentials are revoked and the user does not have the ability to remove or destroy information at the last minute. In the event of an involuntary termination the employee should be given no warning before the event happens so that they do not have the time to perform any malicious actions before being terminated. For effective internal network security, policy and procedure needs to be in place, and it needs to be enforced from the top down. It is also a good idea to periodically review these policies and procedures to ensure that they still meet the necessary requirements that the business requires. If IT can work together with the rest of a business we can help to lesson that accidental and malicious threat that internal authorized users present.