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Just the other day, Symantec filled us in on who was most attacked and the most frequent form of cyber attacks. Now they are profiling who some of those attacks are coming from: insiders.
In “Behavioral Risk Indicators of Malicious Insider Theft of Intellectual Property: Misreading the Writing on the Wall” authors Dr. Eric Shaw and Dr. Harley Stock paint a picture of what these malicious insiders look like, with the majority being employees in technical positions.
This insider thief averages out to be a 37-year-old male, who already has a new job. In fact, some 67 percent of insider thieves already have a new job lined up and more than half steal data within a month of leaving, according the report summary.
Symantec describes these offenders as people with personal “predispositions and stressors,” making them susceptible to stealing intellectual property.
The researchers point to professional setbacks as one thing that pushes insiders to take information they already have access to. Fifty-two percent of cases had a trade secret stolen and in a majority of the time, all the insider used was a network email to do the job.
The cyber thief profile goes along with a program that SAIC Inc. and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are working on to detect suspicious online behavior before an insider could successfully wreak havoc.
