Protecting your business against Rogue Employees is nothing to laugh about. Edward Snowden’s leaking of top-secret NSA documents has raised awareness of internal threats in organizations worldwide. Have you ever considered what a past employee, disgruntled for any number of perceived or fabricated reasons, might attempt in planning to steal your clients or attack your company?
A determined Rogue Employee can severely hurt a past employer and inflict a great deal of damage. Rogue Employees have been found to:
- Destroy computer files
- Badmouth you to clients
- Destroy documents
- Report you to authorities
- Steal from your company
- Cause your company to incur expenses or liability
While it is impossible to completely define a Rogue Employee, it is sensible to believe the most destructive Rogue Employee is the one you don’t identify as
such.1
The easiest way for a Rogue Employee to retaliate may be through your data
An insurance industry reports suggests that as much as 80% of cyber liability claims are estimated to come from employee negligence, including acts by Rogue Employees. Far too many privately held companies neglect to implement proactive detection and intervention processes useful in identifying potential employee security risks and thus preventing them from becoming security incidents.
MORGAN STANLEY FIRES ROGUE EMPLOYEE AFTER CUSTOMER DATA LEAK (FORBES, JANUARY 15, 2015)
“MORGAN STANLEY HAS A NEW KIND OF DATA BREACH: A ROGUE 30-YEAR OLD EMPLOYEE NAMED GALEN MARSH.”2
Small business owners and management must understand that:
- Your ex-employees may have access to IT systems and files from your company
- Security is as relevant to you as it is to large enterprises worried about foreign hackers
- SMB’s are especially at risk from accidental or malicious acts from past and current employees
What is the scope of your threat?
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 917,000 people in “Professional and Business Services” separated from their job in May, 2014. (JOLTS report). From a sample of these people, Osterman Research concluded that 89% retained access (login and password) to at least one corporate software application from a former employer. The apps included:
- File sharing tools (particularly DropBox and Google Drive)
- Finance (such as PayPal)
- Customer Relationship Management (such as SalesForce)
- Website and IT services (such as Google apps, MS Office)
- Especially alarming, the study shows that 45% of these past employees could access “confidential” or “highly confidential” data
- 68% admitted to storing work-related materials in their personal cloud storage services
- 60% were NOT asked for their cloud credentials when they left the company
Why has this issue become so prevalent?
Much of the risk comes from attempts to save costs by not providing employees company-owned devices. Companies with “bring your own device” and “bring your own software” policies do not fully appreciate the growing level of risk. Many SMB’s also lack stringent IT policies.
The Genusys Group has a rigorous security process, one proven to protect companies from Rogue Employees. While enlisting encryption, access limiters,
access monitoring, education, and iteration are often deemed important, the real avenue to success is providing employees with simple solutions that provide better workflow while filling the risk gaps.
- Single sign-on (SSO)
- Sync4Share cloud storage
- Strict onboarding and offboarding compliance procedures (especially for businesses in regulated industries)
Protecting your business against Rogue Employees is one example of what The Genusys Group can: a practical solution that can help your company avoid
potentially enormous damage.
- http://usproins.com/the-rogue-employee/
- http://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/2015/01/05/morgan-stanley-fires-rogue-employee-after-customer-data-leak/
Is Your Business at Risk?
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