Part 1: Mitigating the risk of internal breach
Companies spend considerable resources protecting against the threat of data breach – and rightly so. A data breach can result in large fines and, more importantly, a damaged reputation. While companies focus most of their efforts on mitigating the risk of external threats such as hackers or viruses, they often overlook internal breaches, which are more common. Internal breaches can sprout from a wide array of motivations. Former employees may be unhappy about being let go; current employees may feel overlooked for an opportunity or simply want to impress a new employer by copying intellectual property or contact lists. The added danger to these threats is that they easily go undetected, as no one is looking for them and ex-employees are likely to know their way around the network. A recent internal breach in 2017 saw the City of Calgary’s payout fines of 92.9 million Canadian dollars. The source of this scandal was allegedly an email sent by a city staffer to an employee of another Alberta municipality, sharing the personal and confidential information of 3,716 municipal employees. Leaving your network unprotected can leave you vulnerable to these threats.
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