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The classic insider threat story used to be simple: a disgruntled employee steals data, or someone makes a mistake and clicks the wrong link. That still happens. What is changing is the playbook on the other side.
Recent reporting describes threat actors actively recruiting employees and contractors who already have legitimate access, especially people who feel overlooked, underpaid, or worried about job security.
For business leaders, this is a different kind of risk. Many security controls are built to keep outsiders out. Recruited insiders can walk around those controls because they already have keys, passwords, and trusted device access.
This article explains what the “new insider threat” looks like, how to spot early warning signs, and how to reduce risk without turning your workplace into a surveillance state.
When criminals recruit insiders, they are not trying to “hack” in the traditional sense. They are trying to buy a shortcut around security. The most common targets are people who can do any of the following:
approve payments or update vendor bank details
access customer lists, HR files, or sensitive documents
create new accounts, reset passwords, or disable security tools
export data from a system that does not log activity well
provision access in cloud apps or identity tools
Recruitment can start quietly. A message on social media. A “consulting” offer. A promise of quick money for “just one export” or “a screenshot.” Reporting notes that some attackers look for people affected by layoffs, demotions, or workplace dissatisfaction.
What makes this so damaging is that the activity can look normal at first. If a trusted employee exports a file, the export itself is not always suspicious. Context matters: why, when, and how often.
A practical way to think about the risk is this: insider recruitment attacks the trust layer of your business. It is not only an IT issue. It is an operations issue, a finance issue, and a people issue.
Many organizations start by formalizing insider risk as part of their overall security governance and liability planning, including policies, roles, and response steps that line up with resources like cybersecurity and liability protection from Infradapt.
Insider recruitment is a shortcut around perimeter controls because the insider already has legitimate access.
High-risk roles include finance, IT administration, HR, and anyone with broad data export rights.
Early recruitment often looks like a “side gig,” not an obvious threat.
Treat insider risk as a cross-functional business risk, not just a security problem.
Leaders often ask for a list of “red flags.” The problem is that people are complicated, and most warning signs have innocent explanations. The goal is not to label employees as threats. The goal is to spot risk conditions where abuse would be easy and hard to detect.
Here are warning signs that are operational, observable, and relevant:
Examples:
repeated access to systems that are unrelated to job duties
unusual file downloads or mass exports
new use of personal email, personal cloud storage, or removable media for work files
frequent password resets for others, or repeated account unlocks
These can be benign. They can also signal that someone is testing boundaries.
If one person is the only one who can:
run payroll changes
approve vendor payment updates
administer your identity platform
then you have a single-person access risk. That risk exists even if the person is trustworthy.
Process gaps are often the real root cause:
no second approval for changing vendor bank details
shared admin accounts “for convenience”
unclear rules on what data can be exported and when
offboarding steps that rely on manual checklists and memory
This is where good operations design beats guesswork.
That fear is rational. Heavy-handed monitoring can damage trust, create HR risk, and still miss the real threats.
Monitor for high-risk actions, not personal content. Focus on exports, privilege changes, and sensitive data access.
Restrict monitoring to business systems and business accounts.
Document what is monitored, why, who can view it, and how long it is retained.
Require a clear escalation path that includes HR and legal where appropriate.
This approach supports security without defaulting to blanket surveillance. It also makes it easier to explain your practices to employees in plain language.
Example: a professional services firm with a “helpful” data exporter
Example: A consulting firm notices a project manager exporting large client folders “to work faster at home.” The real issue is that the official remote workflow is slow and frustrating. The firm improves the approved workflow, limits bulk export permissions for that role, and adds logging for high-risk exports. The outcome is fewer workarounds and fewer opportunities for abuse.
Look for role-to-access mismatches and process gaps, not personality traits.
Single-person access risk is a business continuity issue as much as a security issue.
Privacy-respecting monitoring focuses on high-risk actions, not personal content.
Many “red flags” are created by broken workflows that push people into workarounds.
Least privilege means people get the minimum access needed to do their job, and nothing more. It is one of the most effective ways to reduce insider risk because it limits what any one compromised or recruited account can do.
If you want one sentence: insider recruitment gets harder when access is narrow, time-limited, and well logged.
Prioritize these first:
privileged admin access (especially identity and endpoint tools)
finance approvals and payment system access
HR and payroll systems
customer data repositories
backups and recovery tooling
Then apply three controls that work well together:
Role-based access: access tied to a defined job role, not an individual “because they need it.”
Time-bound elevation: admin rights only when needed for a task, then removed.
Separation of duties: no single person can complete a full high-risk action end to end.
A Gartner prediction points to where many organizations are heading: by 2027, 70% of organizations will combine data loss prevention and insider risk management with identity and access management context to identify suspicious behavior more effectively. (Gartner, “Gartner Unveils Top Eight Cybersecurity Predictions for 2024,” 2024.)
You do not need to adopt everything at once to benefit. Even partial improvements reduce the “blast radius” of one account.
To keep access changes consistent across endpoints and networks, many organizations align this work with their operational IT management model, such as IT support and network management from Infradapt.
Shared accounts are a gift to attackers. They also make investigations harder because accountability is unclear.
A practical replacement is:
named accounts for admins
separate admin accounts from daily work accounts
strict logging on privileged sessions
approval workflows for sensitive changes
Key Takeaways
Least privilege reduces the damage an insider can cause and limits what a recruited account can do.
Focus first on privileged access, finance, HR, customer data, and backups.
Replace shared accounts with named admin accounts and strong logging.
Separation of duties removes the single-person “complete the action” pathway.
Cyber insurance is an important safety net, but coverage depends on meeting the requirements written into the policy. The most common causes of denied or reduced claims include missing controls, outdated documentation, and a lack of risk assessment or continuity testing.
By building a structured readiness strategy and maintaining consistent security practices, organizations can protect themselves financially and operationally.
To learn how to strengthen your cyber insurance readiness and long term IT resilience, explore the managed IT services overview from Infradapt.
Most organizations want detection but do not want to create a surveillance culture. That is reasonable. The best approach is to monitor high-risk actions on business systems, not personal content.
Focus monitoring on:
bulk downloads and exports
privilege escalation and new admin grants
disabling security tools
creation of new accounts or access keys
unusual remote access patterns
To keep it fair and defensible:
document what is monitored and why
restrict access to logs
set retention rules
involve HR and legal in escalation procedures
This type of governance often fits alongside broader risk and incident readiness planning like cybersecurity liability protection from Infradapt.
Key Takeaways
Monitor risky actions, not personal content.
Logging is only useful if it is consistent and reviewed.
Clear rules and boundaries protect culture and reduce HR risk.
A defined escalation path prevents ad hoc reactions.
Offboarding is a top risk window because access can linger. Strong offboarding is mostly process discipline.
Minimum controls:
disable accounts at separation time, not later
remove access from key SaaS apps and admin tools
rotate shared credentials and known secrets
confirm device return and data handling
review recent high-risk actions around departure
If business continuity is tied to a small number of admins, combine offboarding hardening with resilience planning like disaster recovery and continuity guidance from Infradapt.
Key Takeaways
Offboarding failures create lingering access that is easy to exploit.
Disable accounts quickly and remove SaaS access systematically.
Rotate shared secrets and review high-risk activity around departures.
Reduce “keys to the kingdom” dependence on any one person.
To deepen your understanding of operational controls that reduce insider risk, review outsourced IT guidance from Infradapt.
An insider threat is a security risk caused by someone with legitimate access to a company’s systems, data, or facilities, such as an employee, contractor, or vendor, who misuses that access intentionally or unintentionally.
Hackers recruiting employees means attackers try to pay, pressure, or trick workers into helping them bypass security. This can include sharing credentials, exporting data, approving payments, or providing access to internal systems.
Common signs include unusual access to systems unrelated to a role, sudden spikes in downloads or data exports, repeated privilege requests, use of unapproved file-sharing tools, or changes to security settings without a clear business need.
Roles with high-value access are most targeted, including IT administrators, finance and accounts payable staff, HR and payroll teams, and employees who can export large amounts of sensitive customer or business data.
Businesses can focus monitoring on high-risk actions in company systems, like bulk exports, privilege changes, and disabling security tools, while avoiding personal content. Clear policies on what is logged and who can access logs help maintain trust.
Single-person access risk is when one person can complete a critical action alone, such as changing vendor banking details, creating admin accounts, or controlling backups. It matters because it increases the chance of fraud or sabotage and makes incidents harder to detect and recover from.
