14 DAY TRIAL // SpectorSoft, a company that specializes in user activity monitoring and analysis software, has published its predictions for 2014. The predictions are interesting because they’re from the perspective of insider threats.
Ever since it was launched in the autumn of 2013, Healthcare.gov has experienced numerous problems, including security and privacy-related issues. SpectorSoft believes the healthcare service might experience an insider-driven breach carried out by someone who has access to sensitive information.
Why would someone do that? They might do it to make a political statement, to embarrass those who support the program, to gain fame, or stall progress.
Experts also believe that C-level executives whose companies suffer data breaches will get involved more, not only for public relations reasons, but also to approve payments to mitigation services providers.
They will also become more involved with security operations, and they’ll support investments for security solutions that protect the company against both insider and external threats.
Organizations have always been concerned about the access rights of privileged users, but after the Edward Snowden incident, it’s likely that they’ll focus even more on this area.
Up until now, enterprises haven’t been too keen on publicly disclosing details of their IT security programs, in many cases because they didn’t want potential threat actors to think they had large volumes of valuable data that might be worth targeting.
However, as consumers and business customers start demanding increased levels of privacy and data security, organizations will start publicizing their IT security programs to win their customers’ trust.
In 2014, more value will be placed on threat intelligence systems that can detect threats and provide alerts in real time. This initiative will be driven by the increasing number of news headlines about data breaches carried out by both insiders and external actors.