A Human Resources Challenge – The Insider Threat To Data Assets

On April 23, 2019, a privacy notification by the FBI stated that U.S. businesses are reporting a significantly increased amount of data loss as a result of insider threat actors. Companies should not assume that this warning falls squarely within the domain of their Information Technology or Chief Information Security Departments. The vast majority of data-loss incidents have a human component. Data security is as much a function of managing people properly as it is controlling a company's physical and technical environments. Below is a list of representative factual scenarios taken from real incidents:

• An employee receives a seemingly legitimate email that asks for all employees' W-2s and sends the information in a phishing attack.