An independent threat intelligence team warned the Treasury Department that representatives of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency was a significant “insider threat.” The warning made the problem of insider threats a new worry for US citizens, sparking multiple discussions on social media. It also made a new case for technology that defended against the threat.
Insider threats are not the most common form of security weakness, but they are the hardest to defend against. Even if a company successfully screens out potential bad actors in the hiring process, they have to make sure who they hired is who shows up to get their security badge. And if they get past those two processes, there’s always the possibility of an unbalanced or angry employee bringing a firearm into the office to commit mayhem. Luckily there are technologies in place, such as advanced detection and response, identification validation, and AI-driven weapons detection available in the market.
Identifying the threat
According to the Verizon Data Breach Investigation report for 2024, 80 percent of breaches are based on social engineering and phishing making them the top attack vectors. However, the report said that 32 percent of breaches involving an insider are considered malicious. That is a cause for significant concern when hiring new workers. Identifying a potential threat is easier than repairing the damage it causes later.
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