How to tackle the insider threat

The need to protect the data an organisation holds or shares during normal business operations is now well known and understood. There has been a focus on the protection of organisations from threats that originate externally. Mainly due to cyberattacks over the Internet, but also from physical access to data in unsecured offices or on lost mobile devices.

Another aspect of data security that is just as important is the security of data that employees have access to and its transmission outside of the organisation. Once data leaves an organisations supervision, then it is open to interception by third parties. Not all of whom will have benign objectives.

The transfer of data out of an organisation needs to happen for businesses to operate. But it is vital that any data sent is secured so that only the intended recipients can access it. It is also essential to protect against human error so that sensitive or confidential information is not accidentally emailed to recipients who should not see it. Everyone has either sent or received an email that was addressed incorrectly at some point. This sort of error, along with more deliberate unauthorised data sharing from within, is often referred to as the insider threat.

The award winning data protection platform available from Egress Software Technologies and Renaissance, allows organisations of all sizes to implement protections against exposure of unstructured data via the insider threat. At the same time, it enables effective business productivity within set compliance guidelines. The Egress data security platform is the only email security solution that has Commercial Product Assurance accreditation from the UK National Cyber Security Centre. Contact Renaissance  to find out more about the Egress solutions and how they can help your organisation. Read on for a high-level overview of the solutions available within the Egress platform to help guard against the insider threat.

Data Security Platform

The Egress solution is delivered as a machine learning backed data security platform that allows unstructured data to be protected. The diagram below outlines the five areas that are covered.

Each section of the platform does the following:

1. Discovery and reporting - find out where your data is so that it can be protected in real-time. Comprehensive reporting on who shares data and who accessed it.
2. Classify data - mark data at different levels of classification so that controls can be applied. Ensure that sensitive data is always encrypted to fulfil regulations such as GDPR. Fulfil ISO27001 data security requirements.
3. Prevent user error - stop emails, attachments, and files being sent by staff in error.
4. Control access - control who has access to unstructured data files. Share files securely without having to email them. Revoke access rights to emails and files already sent if circumstances change or an issue is discovered. Trusted recipients can authenticate seamlessly to access data sent to them. Manage internal and external access via security groups. Options to store data files on-premise, with cloud services, or as a hybrid of both.
5. Protect data - encrypt data files and emails with a single click and via enforceable policies. Control who can read emails and files when they are sent outside of an organisation. Encrypt emails both in transit and at rest along the delivery chain. Prevent downloading and copy/paste from emails and files.

Conclusion

Guarding against accidental data leakage is an integral part of any data security strategy. The Egress data security platform will do this for you and also protect against malicious data sharing from within your organisation. Contact Renaissance today to find out more.