The perils of the privileged insider

Insiders may not be the source of the majority of threats organisations face, but any malicious activity, or even inadvertent mistakes that they make, can be among the most damaging—and especially those with elevated privileges to access sensitive systems and information. According to a recent national fraud survey from the US, privileged insiders cost US business US$348 billion per year in corporate losses.

Employees are often given elevated privileges according to their job function or for specific tasks that they are asked to perform, but those privileges are often not removed when the task has been completed. In many cases, privileges accumulate over time and organisations face a tough task accounting for all the excess privileges that have been granted unless they have adequate tools in place. This problem is made even worse by the number of privileges that are shared among insiders as they are assigned on a task basis, rather than tied to specific individuals. This makes it all but impossible for organisations to hold individuals fully accountable for their actions and to root out the specific cause of problems.

Bloor Research will be participating in a webinar to discuss the problem of shared accounts and overly privileged users in association with Centrify at 3pm GMT 19^th March 2014. This webinar will also provide pointers as to how organisations can deal with these issues in an efficient and effective manner. To register for this webinar, follow this link: Shared accounts: the backdoor that’s too tough to close.