Content tagged here examines threats originating from within an organization, including malicious employees, negligent staff, and compromised credentials. Topics cover behavioral indicators, monitoring tools, data loss prevention, insider threat programs, and organizational policies designed to detect and mitigate risks from trusted individuals.
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In July 2020, a 17-year-old in Florida convinced a Twitter employee to hand over internal credentials. Within hours, the attacker had hijacked accounts belonging to Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, and Apple — tweeting a Bitcoin scam that netted over $100,000. The most sophisticated firewall in the world wouldn&
In July 2020, a 17-year-old in Florida convinced a Twitter employee to hand over internal tool credentials. Within hours, threat actors had hijacked high-profile accounts — Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Apple — and ran a Bitcoin scam that netted over $100,000. The breach didn't start with a zero-day exploit
A Disgruntled Engineer, a Careless Accountant, and $11.45 Billion in Losses In 2018, a former Tesla employee reportedly sabotaged the company's manufacturing systems and exfiltrated sensitive data to third parties. That same year, countless organizations bled data because an employee clicked a phishing link or misconfigured a
The Server Room Door Was Unlocked In 2019, a penetration tester hired by the state of Iowa walked into the Dallas County Courthouse after hours. He accessed restricted areas, took photos of sensitive systems, and demonstrated just how easy it was to bypass physical controls. The exercise ended with him
A former employee at a financial services firm in Chicago watched his coworker type her password every morning for two weeks. He memorized it character by character. After he was terminated for performance issues, he used those stolen credentials to access the company's client database from a public
In 2022, a former employee at Cash App's parent company, Block Inc., downloaded reports containing the personal information of over 8 million customers — months after they'd left the company. The access was never revoked. No alarm was triggered. The breach wasn't discovered until the
One Employee Stole Data for Profit. The Other Just Clicked the Wrong Link. In 2022, a former employee of a major healthcare organization was sentenced to federal prison for stealing patient records and selling them. That same year, the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report found that 82% of breaches involved
The Breach That Came From the Inside In 2022, a former Twitter employee was convicted of spying on behalf of Saudi Arabia, accessing the personal data of dissidents using nothing more than his legitimate credentials. No malware. No phishing email. Just an insider with access and motive. That case made
One Unapproved App Cost a Hospital Network $3 Million In 2023, a regional hospital system discovered that a department had been using an unapproved file-sharing tool to exchange patient records for over a year. The tool had no encryption, no access controls, and no audit trail. When an attacker exploited
In 2019, a penetration tester hired by the state of Iowa walked into a locked courthouse after hours by simply following an employee through a secure door. He was arrested — even though the state had authorized the test. The incident made national headlines and exposed a painful truth: your firewalls,
