A ransomware attack that brings systems down. A high-profile data breach with regulators on the phone before 9 am. A whistleblower story splashed across the business pages.
But not all risks arrive with warning lights. Some creep in. Subtle. Unassuming. Disguised as routine delays or harmless workarounds. Not a bang, but a long, slow leak.
And increasingly, they’re coming from inside the building.
Rethinking the ‘Trusted Insider’
For years, insider threats were boxed off as a niche concern — either low-probability or low-impact. That’s no longer credible. The profile has shifted.
It’s not just the malicious actor anymore. It’s the disillusioned team member. The overstretched contractor. The administrator who keeps quiet about a misstep because they’re not sure if it matters. Often, it’s someone who genuinely believes they’re helping.
According to the 2025 Ponemon Cost of Insider Risks Global Report, the average annual cost of insider threats has risen to $17.4 million per organisation, up from $16.2 million in 2023. This increase is largely driven by higher spending on containment and incident response.
Furthermore, 83% of organisations reported experiencing at least one insider attack in the past year, highlighting the growing prevalence of such threats.
One of the most common detection methods? A gut feeling. Someone noticing something “wasn’t quite right”.
That’s governance by chance, not design.
These threats encompass a spectrum: negligent employees, malicious insiders, and credential theft. Even though there has been progress (the average time to contain an insider incident dropping to 81 days in 2024 from 86 days in 2023), containment is slow.
The Subtlety of Internal Breaches
Unlike external attacks that often trigger alarms, insider threats manifest quietly. A staff member slowly exfiltrates sensitive data. A well-meaning colleague bypasses security for convenience. These actions rarely breach a firewall or trip a compliance threshold, but they can erode control over time.
The complexity of hybrid work has only exacerbated this. Employees access systems from multiple devices over unsecured networks, often outside direct supervision. What was once a clearly defined perimeter has dissolved into a dynamic, fragmented risk surface.
It’s easy to imagine sabotage as a deliberate act. But what if it’s not?
A withheld invoice. A silent failure to approve. A spreadsheet amended without record. Not malicious. Not even deliberate in the conventional sense. But corrosive all the same.
Hybrid Working Has Changed the Calculus
The pandemic redefined not just working patterns but how risk flows through an organisation.
We used to think in terms of “inside” and “outside”. Now? A work laptop becomes a shared device. A cloud folder lives across five locations. Communications blur across Teams, WhatsApp, and personal email. Lines are crossed, innocently, frequently, and sometimes irreversibly.
With that shift, internal threats become harder to isolate. They don’t stand out. They settle in.
Dashboards, compliance reviews, automated alerts, they’re not designed to detect habits. And many insider incidents are precisely that: habits, not anomalies.
Challenges in Detection and Prevention
Traditional cybersecurity frameworks focus heavily on external threats. Firewalls. Endpoint detection. Perimeter control. But internal vulnerabilities, particularly those rooted in behavior and culture, require a different lens.
The Ponemon/Proofpoint report highlighted that while most insider incidents stem from negligence rather than malice, organisations still lack structured detection and response programmes.
The human element remains the most unpredictable. You can log access, but intent? That’s harder to audit.
Where Governance Gets It Wrong
Governance tends to favor categorization: compliant or not, secure or breached, inside or outside.
But the most serious internal threats don’t respect categories. They live in ambiguity, in assumptions, habits and silences.
Some of the most dangerous risks aren’t technical. They’re cultural. A reluctance to challenge. A blind spot for temporary staff. A normalized pattern of approvals without scrutiny.
Organisations that manage insider risk effectively don’t just write better policies; they also implement effective controls. They cultivate curiosity. They make it safe to ask awkward questions. They embed internal audit as a listening function — not a checklist.
You Don’t Need More Alerts, You Need Better Listening
To uncover quiet risks, we need to rethink how we observe them:
- Who still has access that is no longer operational?
- Which processes rely entirely on informal judgement calls?
- When was the last time someone raised a concern early and without fear?
If you don’t know, you may not have a current insider threat.
But you almost certainly have the conditions for one.
Strategic Approaches to Mitigation
Reducing the risk of insider threats requires a multi-layered approach that combines technology, policy, and culture:
- Implement Behavioral Analytics: Utilize advanced tools to monitor for unusual user activity patterns—especially in accessing sensitive systems or data.
- Conduct Regular Access Reviews: Audit access rights systematically to ensure they reflect current roles and responsibilities.
- Train and Educate Continuously: Go beyond basic awareness. Foster a culture where staff understand the “why” behind controls—and feel responsible for their part in maintaining them.
- Establish a Formal Insider Threat Programme: Build cross-functional oversight (e.g. HR, IT, Legal, Security) with clear reporting lines, escalation paths, and ongoing monitoring.
A Final Thought (Before It Becomes a Footnote)
The most dangerous risks aren’t always breaches.
They’re the slow compromises that go unquestioned. The behaviors that drift out of alignment. The policies that lose relevance but remain on paper.
By the time they surface, if they surface, it’s no longer a quiet risk.
It’s a visible failure.
For risk leaders, the challenge isn’t just spotting where cracks have formed. It’s knowing where they’re about to.
