Overcoming the insider

Abstract

Information security has become increasingly important for organizations, given their dependence on ICT. Not surprisingly, therefore, the external threats posed by hackers and viruses have received extensive coverage in the mass media. Yet numerous security surveys also point to the 'insider' threat of employee computer crime. In 2006, for example, the Global Security Survey by Deloitte reports that 28% of respondent organizations encountered considerable internal computer fraud. This figure may not appear high, but the impact of crime perpetrated by insiders can be profound. Donn Parker argues that 'cyber-criminals' should be considered in terms of their criminal attributes, which include skills, knowledge, resources, access and motives (SKRAM). It is as a consequence of such attributes, acquired within the organization, that employers can pose a major threat. Hence, employees use skills gained through their legitimate work duties for illegitimate gain. A knowledge of security vulnerabilities can be exploited, utilising resources and access are provided by companies. It may even be the case that the motive is created by the organization in the form of employee disgruntlement. These criminal attributes aid offenders in the pursuit of their criminal acts, which in the extreme can bring down an organization. In the main, companies have addressed the insider threat through a workforce, which is made aware of its information security responsibilities and acts accordingly. Thus, security policies and complementary education and awareness programmes are now commonplace for organizations. That said, little progress has been made in understanding the insider threat from an offender's perspective. As organizations attempt to grapple with the behavior of dishonest employees, criminology potentially offers a body of knowledge for addressing this problem. It is suggested that Situational Crime Prevention (SCP), a relative newcomer to criminology, can help enhance initiatives aimed at addressing the insider threat. In this article, we discuss how recent criminological developments that focus on the criminal act, represent a departure from traditional criminology, which examines the causes of criminality. As part of these recent developments we discuss SCP. After defining this approach, we illustrate how it can inform and enhance information security practices. In recent years, a number of criminologists have criticised their discipline for assuming that the task of explaining the causes of criminality is the same as explaining the criminal act. Simply to explain how people develop a criminal disposition is only half the equation. What is also required is an explanation of how crimes are perpetrated. Criminological approaches, which focus on the criminal act, would appear to offer more to information security practitioners than their dispositional counterparts. Accordingly, the SCP approach can offer additional tools for practitioners in their fight against insider computer crime.

Overcoming the Warez Paradox: Online Piracy Groups and Situational Crime Prevention

“…In a similar fashion to other industries, the copyright industries are involved in an evolutionary arms race in the protection of intellectual property (IP) from release groups-as industry develops new technologies to prevent the illicit copying of their IP, crackers soon develop methods to circumvent them (Goode and Cruise 2006, 173). 3 Scholars have suggested methods of protecting industry from insider leaks of IP (Willison and Siponen 2009;Willison 2006;Willison and Backhouse 2006;Stephenson 2005), as well as developments in Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies-tools used to ensure copyright compliance (Hunter 2004). Scholars have also developed formalized theoretical frameworks for studying piracy, with the intention of seeking methods to reduce opportunities for individuals to offend (Holsapple et al 2008;Willison and Siponen 2008).…”

Utilizing cyberplace managers to prevent and control cybercrimes: a vignette experimental study

“…Additionally, SCP is widely used to combat non-traditional crimes such as wildlife crime (Pires and Clarke 2011;Kurland et al 2017;Moreto and Gau 2017;Burton et al 2020), terrorism (Clarke and Newman 2009;Mandala and Freilich 2018;Freilich et al 2019), and maritime piracy (Shane et al 2015(Shane et al , 2018. Given the successful implementation of SCP by many governments and its wide adoption in dealing with a variety of traditional and non-traditional crimes, it is unsurprising that there is growing interests in using SCP to prevent cybercrimes (Willison 2000;Beebe and Rao 2005;Willison and Siponen 2009;Hinduja and Kooi 2013;Padayachee 2015;Ho et al 2022). Brewer et al (2019) argue that it is unclear whether SCP interventions can prevent cybercrime effectively.…”

Insider threats among Dutch SMEs: Nature and extent of incidents, and cyber security measures

“…Based on the matrix of 25 techniques (Cornish & Clarke, 2003), some authors developed an adapted version for insider incidents. With the help of a crime script, a theoretical paper suggests a set of measures aimed mainly at increasing the effort insiders must make and the risk they must take to cause an incident, such as using passwords for specific programs and auditing computer logs (Willison & Siponen, 2009). Building on this work, another theoretical paper proposes a broad list of security measures for 22 of the 25 techniques.…”