{"id":9163,"date":"2023-09-15T15:44:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-15T20:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.carahsoft.com\/wordpress\/?p=9163"},"modified":"2025-04-03T11:55:17","modified_gmt":"2025-04-03T16:55:17","slug":"solarwinds-3-strategies-minimizing-insider-threats-blog-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carahsoft.com\/wordpress\/solarwinds-3-strategies-minimizing-insider-threats-blog-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Strategies for Minimizing Insider Threats"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Insider threats (alternatively known as careless or untrained insiders) continue to be a problem for the public sector. According to SolarWinds 2023 Public Sector Cybersecurity Survey,<\/a> 68% of respondents cited careless or untrained employees as one of the highest sources of security threats, second only to foreign governments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Insider threats have continued to increase over the past few years. Mobile work has become commonplace, and more employees have begun using unsanctioned applications, leading to incidents of shadow IT. Meanwhile, hackers have become adept at targeting government employees through phishing and ransomware attacks, which succeed due to human error.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Educating your employees about the dangers of these attacks and putting in proper safeguards to prevent them is critical. Here are three strategies to help employees become more aware of threats and build a better security posture from the inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Understand while not everyone is a trained security expert, everyone can play their part<\/h2>\n\n\n
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\"SolarWinds<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Some organizations tend to say, \u201cEveryone is responsible for cybersecurity,\u201d which is not entirely true. An employee in charge of processing applications for social security benefits is in charge of processing applications for social security benefits, not protecting the agency from a cyber attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, there are little things everyone can do to prevent threats\u2013they just need to know what those things are. It\u2019s more than not opening emails from unknown senders or clicking on suspicious-looking attachments. It\u2019s being vigilant, even when someone is feeling overworked. It\u2019s also knowing who to report these incidents to if and when they occur and how and when to share information with colleagues about potentially suspicious activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other things you can do to help employees protect your agency include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n