Insider Risk Management with AI and ML

Additional remote work and online activity have made individuals and organizations more vulnerable to cybersecurity threats. Many organizations overlook these threats, and often when they do address them, they focus on outside attacks. They can easily fail to see potential risk that lies within their own internal network. And these internal threats are more common than you may realize---here are a few examples, with varying degrees of intent. And there are many more of these threats hidden beneath view. Microsoft Insider Risk Management is a good way to address this internal vulnerability. This compliance solution uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect, investigate, and respond to either malicious or inadvertent activities taking place in an organization. Whether these activities are due to simple negligence or actual ill will, Insider Risk Management can help administrators see what their risks are and how they can best mitigate them.

What Does Insider Risk Management Help Track?

These are some of the risks that Insider Risk Management targets and identifies:

• Intellectual property (IP) theft
• Data theft by departing users
• Code of conduct policy violations
• Sensitive data leaks
• Confidentiality violations
• Fraud
• Insider trading
• Behaviors by disgruntled users
• Regulatory compliance violations

As you can see, insider risks are closely related to compliance. In some cases, employees are behaving in ways that violate compliance codes, perhaps not even aware that they are doing so. Keeping track of what's going on within an organization allows the business to run smoothly, ethically, and securely. Insider Risk Management also improves efficiency, with the ability to set up automatic alerts to employees in response to behaviors that are outside company policy.

How Does Insider Risk Management Do Its Work?

The amount of data that is constantly being processed within an organization is massive and appears to be continually expanding. To keep up with this growing demand, solutions like Microsoft Insider Risk Management make use of AI and ML. Principle Program Manager at Microsoft Talhah Mir puts it this way: "When you think about all these millions of signals, it's really hard to find that needle in a haystack. But when you have the power of ML, you can reason over that in a short amount of time to be able to surface the right issues that you can then go tackle." The new technology of ML allows companies to stay ahead of the game and recognize risks that were previously too difficult to find and track. It can automatically alert you to potential problems in a dashboard that you can easily navigate, like in the image above. To take a look at the workflow that takes place once a potential problem is spotted, see our Insider Risk Management section in a blog about our young interns. (There you can also find a fun role model regarding the addressing of potential insider threats.)

Which Microsoft SKUs Include Insider Risk Management?

To make use of Insider Risk Management, an organization must have one of these Microsoft 365 licenses:

• Microsoft 365 E5 subscription (paid or trial version)
• Microsoft 365 E3 subscription + the Microsoft 365 E5 Compliance add-on
• Microsoft 365 E3 subscription + the Microsoft 365 E5 Insider Risk Management add-on
• Microsoft 365 A5 subscription (paid or trial version)
• Microsoft 365 A3 subscription + the Microsoft 365 A5 Compliance add-on
• Microsoft 365 A3 subscription + the Microsoft 365 A5 Insider Risk Management add-on
• Microsoft Insider Risk Management Standalone (non-profit SKU available)

If your company does not have have one of these subscriptions, you can add Microsoft 365 to your existing subscription, or sign up for a free trial of Microsoft 365 Enterprise E5.

Knowing Insider Risks is Good Business Practice

Want to learn more about Insider Risk Management? Maybe you already have a Microsoft package that allows you to better track your internal risks. Or maybe you want to find out more about steps toward getting there. Either way, we're happy to answer questions or walk you through solutions. As always, we'd love to get to know you and help strengthen your organization from the inside out.