In response to the recently released report from Forrester Research, which says that insider threats are now the number one attack vector, Dwayne Melancon, chief technology officer at Tripwire says:
“This comes as no surprise. After all, insiders have the most unfettered access to critical systems and data so it stands to reason they would be a top vector for attacks and data disclosure problems. This data drives home the need for enterprises to monitor their systems and data for suspicious changes and activities, regardless of the source. Merely watching network traffic is not sufficient.
“This report states that 36% of attacks were a result of inadvertent misuse of data by employees, which indicates we have a lot of work to do to create an informed user community inside our enterprises. Policies are just expectations until employees are give the means and oversight to enforce your corporate policies. If they don't know any better, you can count on them doing something inappropriate with your data, regardless of their intent.
“From an employee training and retention perspective, I've seen great success with coupling awareness training with follow-on retention test and "secret shopper" style testing to determine whether employees are actually hanging on to the information they are expected to know.
“One way to make this cultural emphasis stronger is to provide reports on the retention scores of employees, but organize it according to the business executives to whom they report. This "improvement by competition" approach can help the cultural shift happen more quickly - after all, no executive likes to be at the bottom of the list.”