Insider Threats: When the Attacker Has Valid Credentials

Insider risk can come from malicious, negligent, or compromised insiders - those with trusted credentials within your organization. Insiders are authorized to use IT resources, so conventional security tools offer little detection power to distinguish whether authorized actions have malicious intent. If an insider sabotages business operations or steals intellectual property or sensitive data, the financial, regulatory, and reputational repercussions can bring huge fallout.

An insider’s access and knowledge of the organization’s most valuable assets makes attacks involving insiders harder to identify and remediate than those that originate from outside the organization. Threats from insiders can cost organizations around $15.4 million, on average, according to a recent insider threat study by Ponemon Institute, so it is important to reduce the chance of system compromise or breach from insiders.