Impact and Key Challenges of Insider Threats on Organizations and Critical Businesses
Open accessAbstract
The insider threat has consistently been identified as a key threat to organizations and governments. Understanding the nature of insider threats and the related threat landscape can help in forming mitigation strategies, including non-technical means. In this paper, we survey and highlight challenges associated with the identification and detection of insider threats in both public and private sector organizations, especially those part of a nation’s critical infrastructure. We explore the utility of the cyber kill chain to understand insider threats, as well as understanding the underpinning human behavior and psychological factors. The existing defense techniques are discussed and critically analyzed, and improvements are suggested, in line with the current state-of-the-art cyber security requirements. Finally, open problems related to the insider threat are identified and future research directions are discussed.
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Knowledge derived from one insider attack is not necessarily relevant to others.
“However, few insider investigative techniques exist (Maybury, 2006) because knowledge derived from one attack is not necessarily relevant to others (e.g., CPNI, 2020; Saxena et al., 2020).”
From Sorting Insiders From Co-Workers: Remote Synchronous Computer-Mediated Triage for Investigating Insider Attacks (2024) · cites this paper as Saxena et al., 2020
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- Authors
- Saxena, N., Hayes, E., Bertino, E., Ojo, P., Choo, K.-K. R., & Burnap, P.
- Affiliations
- Cardiff University (GB)
- Bournemouth University (GB)
- Purdue University West Lafayette (US)
- The University of Texas at San Antonio (US)
- Corresponding author
- Saxena, Neetesh
- Venue
- Electronics
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2020-09-07
- Volume
- 9
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 1460
- ISSN
- 2079-9292 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3083528220
- Cited by
- 136
- References
- 67
- Citations by year
- 2026: 23 · 2025: 35 · 2024: 32 · 2023: 24 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 8
- FWCI
- 10.82
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Electronics (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- ORCA Online Research @Cardiff (Cardiff University) (acceptedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/S018263/1)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Information and Cyber Security
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Network Security and Intrusion Detection
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › User Authentication and Security Systems
- Keywords
- insider threats, insider threat detection, critical infrastructure security, cyber kill chain, psychological factors, public and private institutions
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