Leak Season Is Here: Four Ways To Combat Insider Threats

Troy Batterberry is the founder & CEO of EchoMark, an AI-powered watermarking solution designed to combat internal information theft.

The United States is about to enter a period filled with highly disruptive changes.

The new administration has promised to make significant moves, including establishing a new entity, the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE), with the aim to significantly reduce the size of the government. In our highly polarized society, many are not happy about the forthcoming changes. Some will even be unwilling to “go down without a fight” and attempt to sabotage the change or any potential success of the new administration. How? One common tactic saboteurs use is to leak bits and pieces of insider information to distract, stir backlash and ultimately hamper the changes.

While insider leaks can happen at any organization and at any time, controversial change can be a massive trigger to such threats. The next year is likely to be unprecedented within affected organizations.

We don’t have to look far back for examples of this. After Donald Trump was elected to his first term, someone explicitly got a job as a contractor for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) so he could leak the tax returns of prominent leaders, including president Trump. We also saw information leaked about a Trump cabinet pick.

This behavior has the potential to get much worse. In preparation of this, there are proactive steps agencies and organizations can take to prepare themselves.

Four Ways To Prepare Your Organization For A Spike In Leaks

Establish An Insider Threat Program: Almost 80% of organizations have seen an uptick in insider threat activity since 2019, and only 30% say they’re prepared with the tools to mitigate the problem. While external threats often receive proper attention, according to an IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach report, breaches by people inside an organization were the most costly, averaging just shy of $5 million.

Having a formal program in place can protect sensitive information, maintain operational integrity, and make sure your organization can comfortably keep communication lines open and secure. Start by assessing your risk, outlining policies for data sharing and handling, and implementing tools to monitor user activities, detect anomalies and alert security teams about potential threats. Tools can include data loss prevention systems, software that provides analytics on user behavior, as well as security information event management solutions.

Individualize Information: Organizations should consider implementing a steganographic technology that personalizes the information it sends out to its workforce. Technology called forensic watermarking exists that can share sensitive information so each employee receives a completely unique copy, imperceptible to the naked eye. With this technology deployed, employees are more likely to think twice before sharing that confidential presentation on future strategy. Should a leak still happen, the organization can quickly find the source.

Stop Sharing Files: The world needs to move away from using files to share private information. At first, it may sound like an impossibility, but changing the way organizations share information can do a lot to protect their most valuable information. File sharing is more than a risk factor; it is a threat vector since most of the risk of data exfiltration starts with files. Therefore, doing away with them would by nature remove the threat. What is the alternative? Using software as a service (SaaS) applications where no one has the ability to download anything. This approach has the added benefit of working to protect against external threats as well.

Recognize The Importance Of Trust: Information flow is the lifeblood of any organization. It is necessary to drive progress and foster collaboration. When an employee leaks internal information, it can lead an organization to become less open. This can have a huge impact on the culture. Losing trust in your workforce can stymie progress, dismantle collaboration and lead to a toxic work environment. In some ways, this cost is higher than the $5 million cited above because when people feel they have lost their privacy and freedom to share information, a company can lose good talent and have overall lower productivity. This is why having a solution, whether individualizing information or some other tool that will help foster more trust is critical. If an employee knows they have an individualized copy, they are less likely to share it.

Big change is coming, and it’s coming quickly. Regardless of their chosen approach, government and private organizations should prepare for a dramatic increase in insider threat activity. Be ready.

Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?