The rise of social media, cloud, mobility and big data makes insider threats harder to identify, and provide more ways to pass protected information. The average organization monitored by IBM Security Services experienced approximately 81 million security events in 2014, with 55% of attacks carried out by those who had insider access to organizations’ systems. Historically, the term “insider threat” meant that disgruntled or negligent employees were inflicting harm to the company’s assets, either physical or electronic. Today many different classifications have been identified, from inadvertent insiders to quasi-insiders like 3rd party contractors.

Key findings of the IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Quarterly – 2Q 2015:

• Social engineering has turned an annoyance like spam into a legitimate attack vector, as for-profit operators create and sell spam campaigns to trick inadvertent insiders to open an attachment or click on a link.
• Through rigorous practices such as monitoring and maintenance of privileged access, enterprises can better manage and monitor users and networks for both security and compliance.
• In the event of an incident, a thorough understanding of what transpired is essential to preventing it from happening again; learn more about network forensics and how it can benefit the investigation process.

Download the complete IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Quarterly – 2Q 2015