Security of any kind is a major topic of interest in the IT tech world. While many of the security efforts have focused on protecting an organization from outside threats, the prospect of insider threats gains less attention. However, insider risk management is addressed in Microsoft 365, which offers a compliance solution to minimize internal risks in an organization. The tool enables you to detect, investigate, and act on both malicious and careless activities; as well as to define the types of risks a company must look for.
Properly managing and minimizing risk at your company begins with understanding the kind of risks inherent in a contemporary workplace. Some threats are caused by external events outside of our control, while others driven by internal user activities that can be mitigated and avoided. These events may include:
- Leaks of sensitive data
- Breaches of confidentiality
- Theft of intellectual property
- Insider trading activity
- Fraud
- Compliance violations regarding compliance
Because employees in the workplace have access to a wide range of platforms and services, it can be difficult for companies to identify and mitigate risks at the user level, while keeping privacy a priority.
Internal Risk Management
There are several main concerns addressed with an internal risk management policy.
- Workflow: The risk management workflow identifies, investigates and acts to address internal risks in your company. With targeted policy templates, tracking activity across the Microsoft 365 service, and utilizing comprehensive alert and case management tools, you can put your insights to work and act on risky behavior.
- Policies: Organizations can create insider risk management policies with pre-defined templates and policy rules that identify triggering events and risk indicators. Policy templates may include data theft by departing users, data leaks by priority users, data leaks by disgruntled users, security policy violations by departing users and
security policy violations by disgruntled users. - Alerts: Automatic alerts are generated when risk indicators match policy conditions. They are displayed in the Alerts dashboard of Microsoft 365, which allows a quick overall view of all alerts in various stages of response, including severity and status.
- Triage: New user activities that require further investigation can generate automatic “Need Review” alerts. Reviewers can quickly identify and review, evaluate, and triage these alerts. By utilizing alert filters, companies can rapidly identify alerts by status, severity, or time detected.
Microsoft 365 Advanced eDiscovery: Elevating a case for investigation permits a company to transfer the management of the case to Microsoft 365 Advanced eDiscovery. Advanced eDiscovery offers an end-to-end workflow to preserve, amass, review, analyze, and export data for your company’s internal and external investigations.
Users in your organization may have various levels of risk assigned to them depending on their company position, access to sensitive data, or risk profile. Careful inspection and aggressive risk scoring are essential to assist in moving alerts to investigation and quick action.
The tool helps to identify conditions which may elevate insider risks. These stressors may be a substandard performance review, a demotion, or the user being placed on performance review. Though many users do not respond adversely to these events, the stress may result in some employees behaving in ways that they may not normally consider. To help identity these risky behaviors, insider risk management policy templates use the Microsoft 365 HR connector to score risk indicators relating to behaviors that may occur near employment stressor events.
The need to understand and address risk management within your organization is undeniable – and Microsoft 365 provides templates and tools to do just that. If you need assistance with cyber security whether internal or external, call the experts at Alliance IT. We can help you to ensure that your organization is as compliant and secure as possible.
