The holiday season brings reduced staffing, relaxed oversight, and increased use of contractors; conditions ripe for insider threats. Whether malicious or accidental, insider actions can lead to significant data breaches, financial loss, or operational disruption. The Christmas period often sees employees exporting data for work-from-home access or contractors completing final deliverables, creating opportunities for intentional theft or inadvertent data exposure. Executives must remain vigilant during the festive season to ensure proper access controls, monitoring and governance.
Insider threats come in two main forms: malicious insiders and negligent insiders. Malicious insiders may intentionally exfiltrate intellectual property, customer data, or financial information for profit, revenge, or future advantage. Negligent insiders, on the other hand, unintentionally cause harm by mishandling data, clicking phishing links, or connecting insecure devices to the network.
During the Christmas period, attackers exploit reduced security oversight. A contractor with excessive privileges might copy sensitive data to a personal device before leaving. Alternatively, an employee working remotely might forward files to a personal email account for convenience, creating compliance and data retention issues. Even well-meaning staff can inadvertently become conduits for attackers if their devices are compromised while accessing corporate resources offsite.
In Australia, insider-related incidents have been a recurring theme across industries. The Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) estimates that espionage-related insider threats cost Australia at least $12.5 billion in 2023-24. The Medibank data breach illustrated the danger of credential reuse and improper access management, where compromised credentials contributed to data exposure.
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) regularly highlights insider negligence as one of the leading causes of notifiable data breaches.
Globally, in recent legal proceedings, Intel Corporation has filed a lawsuit against a former Seattle-based software engineer for allegedly downloading approximately 18,000 sensitive files from the company systems in late July 2024, just days before his termination took effect. On July 23, the engineer allegedly attempted to transfer files from their work laptop to an external hard drive, but Intel’s internal data loss prevention (DLP) systems blocked the action. However, five days later, on July 28, the engineer reportedly connected a different storage device and successfully exfiltrated the documents.
The Essential Eight provides several controls that significantly reduce insider threat risks, both malicious and accidental:
Implementing these measures across corporate networks and remote-access platforms ensures visibility, control, and accountability – key pillars in insider threat management.
By maintaining Essential Eight maturity and enforcing sound access governance, executives can ensure the organisation’s data remains secure; keeping the Grinch far from the company’s digital Christmas tree.
