Massive Insider Breach At DuPont - News by InformationWeek

Do you track who the most active database users are?

Massive Insider Breach At DuPont - News by InformationWeek: "Gary Min worked as a research chemist for DuPont for 10 years before accepting a job with DuPont competitor Victrex PLC in Asia in October 2005. Between August and December of that year, Min downloaded 22,000 sensitive documents and viewed 16,706 more in the company's electronic library, making him the most active user of that database in the company, according to prosecutors. "

"While many companies worry about departed employees stealing intellectual property through some sort of back door planted in their IT systems, 75% of the intellectual property thefts studied between 1996 and 2002 by the U.S. Secret Service and Carnegie Mellon's CERT program were committed by current employees, says Dawn Cappelli, a senior member of the technical staff at the CERT Program at Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute. Of those current employees committing intellectual property thefts, 45% had already accepted a job offer with another company. "In between the time they have another offer and the time they leave is when they take the information," she says.

The best way to guard against insider breaches is for companies to monitor database and network access for unusual activity and set thresholds that represent acceptable use for different users. If an employee starts downloading thousands of documents, and this is unusual for the job designation, this should automatically trip red flags to an administrator or manager. "