Protect Your Enterprise with “Inside Out” Security

Companies spend vast resources to harden the outermost perimeters of their enterprise. The intent of these investments is to prevent sensitive company data from becoming exposed to hackers. Unfortunately, hardening the outer perimeter of an enterprise is not enough. Without focusing on “inside out” security, companies are left in a state that is, in so many words, crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside.

The image of a hacker sitting in a dark room for days on end, cracking codes and downloading the secret sauce is a bit misleading.  Several recent and infamous attacks have come from disgruntled or dubiously incentivized employees or contractors that already have access to critical assets.

Fortunately, there are many tools, processes and procedures that can be implemented to reduce this risk. The key is to look at security from the inside to the outside – “inside out” security.

Some of the major initiatives to reduce the internal risk include:

Audit – Ensure that users have the appropriate level of access.

Multi-factor authentication for sensitive assets – A more assured way of identifying that a user really is who they say they are.

Privileged Access tool for sensitive assets – A privileged access management (PAM) tool requires users to request access to sensitive assets through a centralized system.

Encrypt sensitive data – Encrypt data in two states – at rest and in transit.

Read more about these methods and the importance of inside-out enterprise security in this white paper.