Effective Detection Methods Against Common Insider Threat Techniques

With remote work, hybrid IT environments, and AI-enhanced automation on the rise, insider threats remain among the most damaging and difficult-to-detect risks in cybersecurity. Identifying malicious insider activity may take weeks or even months despite the many efforts companies put into building cybersecurity threat detection systems. You can increase your chances of uncovering malicious activity by studying insider threat techniques and applying diverse detection methods.

In this article, we discuss the most common techniques behind insider threats and signs to look for, as well as how to detect insider threats and mitigate them.

Why is early insider threat detection so important?

Insider threats typically originate from trusted users with access to critical resources who abuse sensitive data or put the organization’s security at risk intentionally or unintentionally. Insider-caused incidents are usually hard to contain: it takes 81 days on average to detect an insider incident, according to the 2025 Cost of Insider Risks Global Report by Ponemon Institute. 

Despite significant advancements in cybersecurity during recent years, detecting insider threats is rather challenging:

The actions of malicious insiders can cause a great deal of damage if they go unnoticed for a long time. The average cost of handling an insider threat is $17.4 million per organization,​ according to the same report by Ponemon Institute. The report also highlights how malicious insiders cause incidents that result in higher per-case costs, whereas negligent and outsmarted insiders account for 75% of total insider-related incidents. Employees who ignore policies, utilize shadow IT, or mishandle devices may unintentionally open the door to serious breaches. 

We’ve previously discussed several examples of insider threats that demonstrate how the consequences can be far more severe than the obvious financial issues. For instance, in 2024, a former Google engineer openly leaked proprietary Pixel chip designs on social media, exposing Google’s trade secrets to the world. The ex-employee even tagged Google rivals Apple and Qualcomm in his posts and boasted he’d do “unethical” things to get what he felt he was owed​. As a result, Google had to scrap the exposed chip schematics, which significantly impacted the company’s competitive advantage.

Another high-impact insider-related incident occurred at MedStar Health in 2024 when employee negligence allowed an external attacker to access and expose the personal data of over 183,000 patients. The breach lasted nearly nine months and was attributed to phishing attacks on three employees’ email accounts, as well as poor oversight of employee access privileges. While financial penalties were not publicly disclosed, the reputational damage and regulatory scrutiny following the event highlighted how human error and inadequate access controls continue to expose central vulnerabilities in cybersecurity.

In the above examples, each organization suffered from preventable cybersecurity incidents that were preceded by different insider threats. Let’s take a closer look at some of the most common malicious insider techniques in the next section.

Key insider threat techniques 

The way a cyberattack is executed can be referred to as a technique, tactic, process, or method. For the sake of clarity, this article uses MITRE’s definition of an attack technique:

The technique behind an insider threat usually depends on an attacker’s intent, level of technical skills, knowledge of the organization’s security system, and their access level.

According to MITRE’s Enterprise ATT&CK matrix, as laid out in their knowledge base, the malicious insider common techniques include:

• Transfer of data to cloud account (T1537) — using personal cloud storage services or personal email to covertly move sensitive data outside the organization.
• Exfiltration via removable media (T1052) — copying confidential files to USB drives or other portable devices. 
• Automated exfiltration (T1020) — setting up scripts or scheduled tasks to automatically gather and transmit data over time. 
• Data from information repositories (T1213) — accessing and extracting sensitive data directly from internal document management systems, such as SharePoint or internal servers.
• Data from local system (T1005) — collecting sensitive information directly from local workstations or endpoints, typically without elevated privileges.
• Account manipulation (T1098) — creating or altering user accounts and permissions to maintain unauthorized access. 
• Valid accounts (T1078) — abusing legitimate credentials (their own or stolen) to access data and resources without raising alarms.
• Unsecured credentials (T1552) — exploiting insecurely stored credentials such as plaintext passwords in configuration files or browsers to get unauthorized access.
• Internal spear phishing (T1534) — using a trusted internal email account to deceive coworkers and collect their login credentials or sensitive information. 
• Financial theft (T1657) — misusing authorized access to execute fraudulent transactions or steal funds. 
• Data destruction (T1485) — deleting or corrupting critical data to damage the organization or cover one’s tracks. 
• Inhibited system recovery (T1490) — disabling backups and recovery systems to ensure that once data or systems are damaged, the restoration process is difficult or impossible.
• Data manipulation (T1565) — altering or falsifying information in systems to hide malicious actions or to commit fraud. 
• Indicator removal on host (T1070) — tampering with audit logs and system records to erase evidence of one’s malicious actions. 
• Impaired defenses (T1562) — disabling security controls or tools (e.g., altering DLP settings or reconfiguring logging policies) to avoid detection.
• Obfuscated files or information (T1027) — hiding malicious files or stolen data using encryption, renaming, or other obfuscation techniques. 
• Hidden artifacts (T1564) — concealing malicious files, scripts, or data within hidden directories or employing steganography to avoid discovery.

These techniques rarely occur in isolation. Insiders often combine multiple methods as part of a broader attack. 

The forms insider threats can take

Let’s now explore how the aforementioned techniques manifest in practice by examining three common insider threat scenarios and their key warning indicators.

Data exfiltration

One of the most widespread and damaging scenarios is when sensitive data is transferred to parties or locations outside the organization. There are many motivations for stealing sensitive information: financial gain, revenge by a disgruntled employee, corporate espionage, or even hacktivism. There are also a variety of ways to exfiltrate data.

The following actions can be indicators of data theft:

• Accessing sensitive data at odd hours
• Downloading data to personal devices (especially if an organization hasn’t implemented a bring your own device policy)
• Uploading files to a private cloud storage account
• Sending data outside the protected perimeter
• Failing to create or damaging data backups.

Privilege misuse

Sometimes, insider threats aren’t about stealing data but abusing access. Employees or contractors who already have legitimate credentials can misuse them (or steal someone else’s) to reach information or systems they haven’t been granted access to. These credentials may be harvested through phishing; guessed due to weak passwords; or even retained after an employee leaves. 

The main red flags include:

• Unusual interest in data and projects that a user can’t access
• Requesting access to sensitive systems without legitimate reasons
• Convincing IT to reset passwords or escalate access
• Creation of backdoor privileged accounts
• Lateral movement in the network
• Installing unauthorized software and administrative tools
• Changes to security configurations without request.

Sabotage

The motivation behind trying to sabotage an organization’s assets can vary: revenge, blackmail, conflicts with management, or planned termination. Saboteurs rarely steal data; they would rather delete or corrupt data, destroy parts of the organization’s infrastructure, or physically damage corporate equipment.

Indicators that an insider may be planning to sabotage assets include:

• Repetitive cases of abusive behavior or conflicts with colleagues and superiors
• A disgruntled attitude regarding recent promotions or salary changes
• Sending emails with attachments to competitors
• Requesting access to resources the user doesn’t need
• Changing configurations of technologies used for insider threat detection
• Deleting accounts intentionally or failing to create backups
• Making changes to data that no one requested.

As you can see, these insider threat techniques have different motivations, execution methods, and indicators. Thus, you must use diverse threat detection methods in order to spot each of them. Let’s take a look at some of the best practices for insider threat detection below.

How to detect insider threats: Top seven methods

Detecting insider threats is notoriously challenging because insiders often have legitimate access to your systems and understand how to avoid raising red flags. Therefore, employing a combination of technology, behavioral analysis, and organizational awareness makes detection far more effective.

1. Monitoring user activity 

One of the most effective ways to detect insider threats is to continuously monitor user activity. This involves more than reviewing login times or file access — it’s about understanding what users are actually doing within your systems.

On-screen session recording allows security teams to view exactly how users are interacting with critical systems. When combined with rich metadata, recordings are a powerful tool for identifying abnormal or high-risk activity. Real-time alerts further enhance threat detection, flagging when a user performs actions beyond their typical role. 

2. Deploying user behavior analytics 

User behavior analytics systems use machine learning to establish a baseline of normal behavior for users and entities and flag anomalies. For example, UEBA tools can detect baseline deviations such as an employee accessing files at 3 AM or downloading far more data than usual.

Imagine a financial analyst who typically works 9–5 and accesses standard finance reports daily. Then one night, the employee decides to download some confidential files. A UEBA system can flag this as unusual activity and generate an alert. 

3. Tracking privileges

One of the most overlooked threat vectors is “privilege creep”, where employees accumulate unnecessary access rights over time. Periodically reviewing user access rights (especially for former employees or contractors) and scanning your system for unmanaged accounts can help you reduce the risk of privilege misuse.

Regular audits are one way to identify former employees who still have admin rights to your customer database — a clear red flag!

4. Using SIEM systems

A security information and event management (SIEM) system aggregates logs from monitoring systems to paint a full picture of user activity. The more comprehensive the user activity logs (access times, privilege changes, and input keystrokes) the SIEM receives, the faster it can provide a complete forensic image.

Say some of your employees log in remotely from an unrecognized device and type a prohibited command — a SIEM can swiftly correlate these events and help your security team spot the threat faster.

5. Implementing an insider threat program

An effective insider threat program goes beyond just software. It involves a dedicated team focused on correlating alerts, investigating suspicious behavior, and collaborating with HR when needed.

This kind of program is crucial for catching patterns that may not look threatening at first. For instance, it can allow admins to spot when someone frequently accesses peer directories, or help HR to act swiftly when someone makes veiled complaints about management. This human layer of review and pattern recognition often plays a huge role in insider threat detection.

6. Promoting employee awareness 

As helpful as technology is, your regular employees can spot certain early warning signs that machines miss. Co-workers of malicious actors might notice erratic behavior, copying files excessively, or bad-mouthing your company after being passed over for a promotion. Making employees aware of insider threats and encouraging them to report abnormal activity are powerful threat detection methods.

7. Hunting down insider threats

Insider threat hunting is also an effective method to detect insider threats. Instead of waiting for an alert, security officers should assume that their network has already been compromised and look for possible indicators of a breach.

Insider threat hunting is similar to an internal security audit with one key difference: during an audit, security officers measure compliance with certain laws, standards, and regulations. With threat hunting, they set the audit agenda themselves.

To hunt down insider threats successfully, your security team needs to analyze massive amounts of data: reports of previous security events, results of risk assessments, logs of suspicious and negligent user activity, risk scores generated by AI-based tools, etc. Similar to reviewing user access rights, threat hunting must be done regularly.

How Syteca can help detect and respond to insider threats

Syteca is a comprehensive cybersecurity platform that helps organizations detect, investigate, and prevent insider threats. Here’s how Syteca can help you identify insider threats:

Complete visibility into user activity

Syteca provides complete visibility into all user actions across your endpoints. The platform can monitor and record any user session, capturing rich context and metadata for each action. It allows you to view the real-time actions of your users in a screen-capture recording format, and can log details such as keystrokes typed, applications launched, websites visited, commands executed, and even USB devices connected. Syteca leaves no blind spots, delivering the transparency that is crucial for detecting and analyzing insider threats.

AI-powered module

The Syteca platform leverages AI to track typical login times for users. If login attempts at non-normal work times occur, Syteca triggers an alert to security teams​. This functionality allows you to detect privilege abuse or early signs of sabotage, often indicated by user activity outside normal working hours.

Alerting system

Syteca sends real-time alerts that notify you of risky actions as soon as they occur. The system is equipped with a variety of pre-defined alert rules for common threats and also allows you to set customizable alerts. Crucially, each alert is tied to a specific session so you can immediately review the user’s on-screen activity leading up to the alert event​.

Automated incident response

Beyond notifying your security team, Syteca empowers organizations to automatically respond to threats once an alert is triggered. For example, Syteca can immediately log out a user who performs an illicit action,  block an unauthorized USB device, and terminate dangerous processes as soon as they are detected​. These automated features intercept insider threats immediately, limiting damage by cutting off data access and lateral movement pathways.

Privileged account discovery

Syteca can scan your network for unmanaged privileges. The platform looks for dormant, orphaned, or excessive accounts and brings them under centralized management, allowing you to either remove or onboard them. This proactive discovery process helps you eliminate unused or unknown accounts that may leave a backdoor open for privilege abuse and escalation. 

Access management

Granular access controls enable you to define who can reach specific systems and data resources, and under what conditions. If a user wants to access a critical endpoint above their level of permission, they must make a manual request and wait for admin approval, minimizing potential privilege misuse.

By restricting unnecessary access, Syteca also helps prevent attackers from performing lateral movement across your network. Even if credentials are compromised, the combination of continuous monitoring and just-in-time access controls means a malicious actor can’t pivot to other systems undetected. 

SIEM integration

Syteca integrates seamlessly with SIEM platforms, feeding them with detailed user activity logs, alerts, and security events. You can search across recorded and live on-screen user activity, correlate events, visualize behavior over time, and review anomalies in context.

Comprehensive reports

Syteca offers extensive reporting to convert raw monitoring data into actionable information for multiple purposes. Security investigators can generate detailed forensic reports that chronologically document a user’s activities during a given period or incident — complete with timestamps, session video replay, and alert markers. These structured reports can serve as tamper-proof evidence, as all exported logs and recordings are cryptographically signed to ensure integrity​.

For compliance teams and auditors, Syteca can produce audit trails that demonstrate adherence to security policies and regulatory requirements. Whether it’s the GDPR, PCI DSS, HIPAA, or another cybersecurity standard, law, or regulation, Syteca can help you avoid penalties by ensuring no suspicious activity goes unmonitored. 

Syteca doesn’t just help detect insider threats — it enables organizations to understand, investigate, and respond to them with clarity and precision. 

Your next step: Total control over insider threats

Insider threats come in all shapes and sizes. They can be malicious or accidental, well-planned or opportunistic, disruptive or low-key, hidden or in plain sight. Each technique requires a corresponding threat detection method. Syteca is a centralized cybersecurity platform that enables comprehensive threat identification and mitigation. 

By deploying a single software solution, you’ll be able to detect and stop insider threats promptly and effectively. Designed to work across different environments, industries, and compliance frameworks, Syteca gives you maximum insider threat visibility, context, and control.