Detecting Insider & Supply Chain Threats in Financial Services Organizations

Source: Shutterstock

Insider threats are a top priority for security teams at financial services organizations. The risk is high – nation-state actors and groups like Lapsus$ will specifically solicit disgruntled employees at target companies to get access to their networks. In fact, 60% of data breaches are caused by an insider; in the U.S. that’s over 2,500 internal breaches per day.

Financial services chief information security officers must be prepared to defend against several types of insider attacks. The amount of money moving through banks and investment firms creates an incentive for employee fraud, or for an insider to help an adversary solely for monetary gain. However, “insider threat” doesn’t always denote angry employees trying to get back at their employers. It also includes external actors targeting and exploiting insiders, honest mistakes by employees, or accounts for contractors or trusted business partners that are accidentally compromised. Something as benign as an employee emailing data to their personal email account to work over the weekend can create a security gap that an attacker can exploit.