Insider Cyber Threats rise by Tech Layoffs

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Technology companies in recent times have asked most of their employees to stay home because of the fast-approaching recession or by other factors. But security analysts say that such kind of knee-jerk reactions could spell trouble for the organizations as employees leaving the firm could turn into insider cyber threat out of frustration or anger.

Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, HP, Wipro, Oracle, RingCentral, Intel, Microsoft and Cisco have shown the door to most of their senior level employees in the past few weeks. And as human brains are often treated as susceptible links to security breaches, the above listed companies should see that they are proactively ready to face the worst.

Supporting this theory is the research carried out by the Ponemon Institute that claims to have witnessed a 44% rise in threats from insiders in the past two years. And researchers from the institute state that costs per incident are up by two-third account to $15.38 million, up from just $5.6 million in the year 2019. Remember, the year 2020 was left unaccounted as the whole of the world was suffering from lockdowns and immense business losses.

Deactivation of remote devices, changing account passwords as soon as worker gets laid off or deleting their accounts and revoking access to online and offline processes might save a lot from falling deep into a business embarrassment.

Coming to disgruntled employees, cyber actors can make the best use of the mind-set of laid-out workers and so employees must keep a tab of employment satisfaction scale in office environments and try their best to cut down the list of disgruntled employees. A fat pay, half yearly increment, bonuses is all that needs…. isn’t?

And unfortunately, if anyone is desiring to leave the organization, then they should be first relieved of their duties and then asked to submit all the credentials that they were possessing. Then an audit of IT infrastructure must be conducted and then the employees must ask to leave.

 

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Naveen Goud is a writer at Cybersecurity Insiders covering topics such as Mergers & Acquisitions, Startups, Cyber Attacks, Cloud Security and Mobile Security

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