Managing insider risk from the extended workforce

The insider risk of your workforce poses a continued financial risk to your company. The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity reported a total of €11.45 million of damages in 2020 as a result of insider breaches alone. This risk only grows when onboarding and offboarding external workers to grow your extended workforce.

In order to mitigate the insider risk of your extended workforce, your organization needs visibility – of contingent workers, system access records, and security protocol enforcement to avoid catastrophic damages to your organization.

This article will examine the level of insider risk tied to the extended workforce, and the various solutions to mitigate this risk.

Extended workforce, extended risk?

Onboarding of contingent workers needs to be thorough and includes providing workers with access to relevant facilities and systems to complete projects. Mismanaging the onboarding process and providing incorrect levels of authorization to workers increases insider risk. BeyondTrust’s privilege access report states 64% of respondents suffered a breach due to misused employee access.

Offboarding contingent workers is just as important, if not more, than onboarding. Workers’ access to relevant systems must be terminated in a timely manner, and it can pose a considerable insider risk if not performed correctly. SailPoint found that 66% of workers still had access to company data via cloud services after leaving the company, and posed a significant insider risk as a result.

How to minimize insider risk

Optimize

Contingent workers require different levels of access to data, systems, and assets in order to complete their tasks and projects. Onboarding and offboarding these workers correctly is important to both ensure they have access to what they need whilst minimizing the risk of an insider breach.

Extended workforce platforms can streamline the onboarding and offboarding process through providing visibility of the relevant systems they need and have access to. These platforms then allow procurement teams to view the authorization required by each worker, enabling them to onboard individuals with the right privileges and remove workers from systems when access is no longer required.

Automate

Involuntary and compromised insider breaches are a result of security process nonconformance. These processes need to be manually updated and refreshed, such as updating security software and regularly changing passwords. Failing to follow these processes increases the risk of an insider breach.

Organizations can use extended workforce platforms to automate and ensure compliance with internal security policies by all contingent workers. They automate the display of specific security protocols for each worker, enabling management teams to provide the workers with the necessary training and access during onboarding. This streamlines the onboarding process whilst simultaneously reducing insider risk.

Manage

Existing contingent workers pose a continuous insider risk to businesses as systems and privileges are regularly updated. You need to ensure contingent workers have up-to-date levels of authorization to minimize the insider risk they pose.

VMS platforms allow businesses to manage their extended workforce in line with security processes. They provide visibility of contingent talent and system access records to help management teams identify insider risks as a result of system or contract changes. These management teams can then implement updated security measures to minimize the risk of a breach.

Managing insider risk with Beeline

Insider risk management is a clear necessity in preserving the future of your business when employing an extended workforce. Minimizing this risk can prove to be a huge administrative task, which is why you need an extended workforce platform that takes security seriously.

At Beeline, we take uncompromising measures to keep your data safe and secure. We minimize the storage of highly sensitive data and protect all sensitive information with multiple layers of security protocols. Our platform enables procurement teams to onboard and manage contingent workers in line with these security protocols to greatly minimize the risk of insider threats.

To learn more about Beeline and how it can secure your business from insider risk, contact a member of our team today.