True Stories of Cyber Awareness: Insider Threats (09/21/2025)
Studies have shown that over the decades the percentages of internal vs external threats have been 30% internal and 70% external. Meaning when an issue or cyber breach occurs, 70% of them occur from someone outside the organization. 30% occurs inside the organization. Meaning close to 30% possibly hate the organization they work for.
Why else would you steal or do the steps to cause the organization harm?
There is a point when the employee snaps or decides to take advantage of the company by theft or deceptive practices. Either way is to cause harm to the company.
This one organization I worked for continues to show up with these articles (Phishing & Data Privacy so far) and continues with an ex-employee that caused destruction once he found out he was being let go.
He was an administrator and saw the paperwork in the HR files and decided he wasn't going quietly. He created email rules that were deployed to clients that deleted emails upon arrival. It didn't take long for users to notice the issue and the engineers to find the rules. The FBI was involved, and the guy was prosecuted for his crime. I helped with data gathering. I was hired months after this incident. It was the first red flag for me with this company.
One of my first experiences with an insider threat was when I first arrived in Silicon Valley in 1999. I was a PERL developer and was there when needed. The head network administrator was not getting along with the owners of the company, and he decided to shut the entire network down. No one could login or access anything within the internal network. They eventually got control back to only have that admin backdoor in and lock everyone out again. It was an interesting experience, and I asked why only 1 engineer had access with the company keys?
It did not end well for either of these individuals. If you are going to be an insider threat, then you need to weigh the consequences and realize legal action will be taken.
Over my career, I have discovered and helped thwart about $5 million in theft and insider threat damage.
