It can feel scary to think that you now live in a time of “trust no one,” especially when it comes to cybersecurity. But when it comes to cyber threats coming from within your organization, compromising data that must be kept highly secure, you can’t be too careful. Still, you can take more of a “trust but verify” approach and safeguard your network from internal threats. Here are a few ways to do that.

Issue Least Privilege Access

There was a time when data networks required only a username and a password to gain access. Once you had those in hand, you gained access to a wealth of information that you perhaps didn’t want or need. It wasn’t obvious at first why there should be various levels of access for different employees within an organization. As technology grew more sophisticated, and threats more dangerous, however, that changed. 

Now, you can segment out who has access to what, and you can establish clearance levels at each access point. With endpoint privilege management, or EPM, an organization can govern who has access to what information. It can even change that access depending on circumstances. This way, you can keep highly privileged data in the hands of a few and better reduce and control your company’s attack surface. 

Have a Clear and Firm Security Policy

In this day and age of highly intelligent systems, you need to have highly intelligent data analysts and cybersecurity specialists on the payroll. Remember, for every security system out there, there is a criminal who can take it down. Without experts who understand the systems and the hackers, you are vulnerable to attack. And it may not even be from a staff member intentionally trying to sabotage you. 

Ethical hackers, or those cybersecurity experts who know how criminals think, can help you put the right security policies into place. You need written documents that let your employees know exactly how they are expected to behave with their clearances. Explain points of vulnerability and what the repercussions will be, for the company and for the individuals who breach their contract, if the system is hacked due to that breach.

Put User Authentication and Strong Password Processes Into Place

Gone are the days when you could have your password be some version of “LOVE,” your pet’s name, or something else that’s easy to guess. Today, 78% of internet users have the same password across multiple accounts. That’s a huge security problem for organizations trying to keep data safe. Part of your written policy has to be that employees use a unique, complicated password that they store with a highly secure password manager.

Another step to take in this direction is to implement authentication procedures at work. These could include a two-step process that users have to go through every time they log in. The first step is usually a password. The second step would be something more complicated, like a verification code sent to email or a private security question users have to answer to get through the next step. Make sure your employees know how to choose difficult passwords and answers. 

Leverage AI for Cybersecurity

Of course, you want to leverage AI for cybersecurity in your organization. With advances in technology come advances in the ability of artificial intelligence to be programmed to hack. This means you’re now dealing with a superintelligence that can learn quickly how to identify and exploit vulnerabilities. With a human staff, there are bound to be some vulnerabilities. Worse, AI can adapt and mutate its programming in order to avoid security protocols. 

The only appropriate response to this reality is to have countermeasures in place. With machine learning, AI can use predictive analytics to learn about past attacks and predict future ones. You can establish continuous monitoring for vulnerabilities and repeating patterns that might signal an attempted breach. Then, AI can shut down all access to your most secure data until a human can get involved and investigate the attempted attack. 

Run Background Checks on Your People

Finally, and perhaps most obviously, it is critical that any organization receiving and storing sensitive data runs thorough background checks on the people who will have access to it. While 88% of data breaches are due to employee mistakes, you cannot discount the fact that you may have criminal actors among your applicants. Either way, your staff should be checked and double checked for their ability to do their jobs and keep information secure. 

Background checks can be run through the federal government to ensure an applicant doesn’t have a criminal background, particularly in technology. You can also run a thorough investigation into any applicant to be sure they haven’t made careless errors in the past. If a person has caused a loss due to a security breach at a previous organization, there may be a lawsuit against them or even criminal charges brought. 

Again, you can’t be too careful when it comes to protecting your organization’s data. It’s not only your company on the line, either. Access to the data in your servers may allow hackers to gain passwords and information that allow for access to other servers at other companies. This kind of cybersecurity problem can escalate quickly. For this reason, safeguarding your network from internal threats must be a top priority for any organization with sensitive data.