Combating insider threat in government

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Combating insider threat in government

IBM has claimed 60 percent of all intrusions can be attributed to insider threat. Further, Information Week suggests that 95 percent of all organizations have e...

John Gilroy

June 2, 2017 3:48 pm

2 min read

Segment 1: Cybersecurity is a matter of national security

Brian Vecci, technical evangelist at Varonis, recently joined Federal News Radio to discuss insider threat in government.

Even appropriate security controls may not be enough after our experiences with people like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. Vecci described how a systematic approach using a metadata framework can alleviate many of these issues.

Varonis has deep experience with many financial and insurance organizations where they have seen drastic reduction in events that involve egress and ingress after application of a metadata framework.

Vecci revealed how Varonis can use machine learning to take a look at a person’s activities rather than the “check box” controls that are in place. He highlighted many aspects of ransomware that can be prevented with a data security platform. For example, a person may not have any role in anything to do with encrypting and decrypting files. A system can see what is going on for attacks like WannaCry. If the system sees anomalous activity, then it can alert the system administrator before it gets distributed.

Everyone who has been hit likes to say “We’d like to think we don’t have any insider threats.” This statement is normally refuted after an event where an insider threat acts in a malicious manner.

Moderator

John Gilroy, Host of Federal Tech Talk, Federal News Radio

John Gilroy has been a member of the Washington D.C. technology community for over twenty years. In 2007 he began weekly interviews on Federal News Radio called “Federal Tech Talk with John Gilroy.” His 428 interviews provides the basis for profitable referral business. In 2009 he created a successful breakfast club of previous radio guests called The Technology Leadership Roundtable. He has been instrumental in two of his guests forming their own radio shows: Derrick Dortch with “Fed Access” and Aileen Black and Gigi Schumm with “Women in Washington.”

In 2011 he began teaching a course in social media marketing at Georgetown University; in March of 2014, John won the Tropaia Award for Outstanding Faculty. John conducts monthly corporate training for large companies on how to leverage social media to generate revenue.

Guest

Brian Vecci, Technical Evangelist, Varonis

Brian Vecci is a 20-year veteran of information technology and data security, including holding a CISSP certification, and has served in applications development, system architecture, project management, and business analyst roles in financial services, legal technology, and data security software organizations. Brian currently serves as a Technical Evangelist for Varonis Systems and works passionately to help organizations of all sizes get the most value from their data with the least amount of risk.