When business professionals talk about security threats, they often talk about external threats: hackers, phishing attempts, DDoS attacks and so on. However, according to a 2020 survey, 66% of organizations consider the threat of an inside attack more likely than external ones. According to another survey by the Ponemon Institute, insider threats increased by 47% from 2018 to 2020. Additionally, the costs of these attacks increased 31% to $11.45M in 2020.

So, what is an insider threat? Insider threats are breaches, disclosures, or theft of private and protected data by someone inside an organization. These thieves will almost invariably have authorized access to the data in question, or a way to receive that authorization either legitimately or by stealing credentials from a colleague.

Insider threats don’t just originate from current employees, either. Many of these breaches occur when a former employee continues to have access to sensitive systems, or they communicate with an accomplice that has such access.