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The Modern Business Has No Perimeter

IF THE BOUNDARIES ARE EVER-CHANGING, WHAT DOES THAT MEAN WHEN IT COMES TO THE
ENDPOINT AND USER BEHAVIOUR?

By Dr Jamie Graves, VP, Product Management, Security Analytics, ZoneFox

According to Haystax Technology, in 2017, 90% of organisations reported feeling vulnerable to insider
attacks -- up from 64% in 2015. This looked set to rise to 99% in 2018, thanks partly to the rise in risk
from regular employees too. These stats tell us that a cyber strategy focused on protecting the perimeter
is now futile -- employees have become the perimeter and they're always on the move, morphing said
perimeter by logging onto the network from different devices and locations.

Indeed, as 2018 reaches its final quarter, these predictions seem increasingly accurate. After all, when
contemplating the various headline-grabbing cyber incidents from the past few months -- of which there’s
certainly been no shortage -- the truly jaw-dropping ones have tended to involve employees, with
motivations ranging from ideology, revenge, and cold hard cash.

An Unholy Trinity

2018 saw Apple crowned as the first trillion-dollar company, closely followed by Amazon -- but that’s not
all these technology giants shared in common. In July, news broke that Apple suffered an insider attack
after a former employee stole data relating to its autonomous driving project before attempting to flee to
China and eventually being arrested by the FBI. September saw Amazon staff caught selling customer
data to third-parties in the US and China.

Evidently, trillion-dollar valuations mean not only a lot of customer data, but also a large organisation to
hide illicit activity within. Both of Apple and Amazon’s insider threats came after Tesla’s, whereby a past
employee tampered with Tesla’s code for autonomous driving software and exported highly sensitive
data to unknown third-parties. It transpired that the prime motivation behind the incident was an act of
vengeance after being denied a promotion.

Of course, insider threats abound in businesses of all sizes, not just technology behemoths. Earlier this
year, a report from Cybersecurity Insiders revealed that two-thirds of US companies now believe that
insider threats are more likely than external attacks. This is because, thanks to the ubiquity of shadow IT

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