Insider Risk
Detection is Too Little Too Late
Alan Fredrickson
5 min read
Recently Everfox Cyber360 report (opens a new window) with some key findings about the weaknesses of detection focused technologies.
“It’s like leaving your front door unlocked. Would you prefer to detect someone coming into your house, or prevent them from getting in?” - Petko Stoyanov, Vice President of Product Strategy, Everfox
A survey of 1000 cybersecurity professionals found that with advances in preventative cybersecurity solutions, more and more agencies and organizations are reducing their reliance on detection-based solutions.
Instead of tallying threats, governments, defense agencies should be asking themselves:
- Are our networks safe from intrusion?
- Are our people protected against internal and external threats?
- Is our data secure and accessible only to those authorized?
70 % of IT Risk Analysts think that detection technologies are flawed as they can’t prevent attacks exploiting zero-day flaws
60% of industry professionals agree that detection technologies are falling short on preventing cyberattacks.
83% of Information Security Analysts believe that leveraging threat prevention solutions will ultimately reduce the likelihood of costly data breaches and operational disruptions.
Those who take a preventative approach beyond detection will be far more confident answering those questions than those relying on vanity metrics and technologies that are failing to keep pace with modern threats.
Read the full Cyber 360 Report (opens a new window).
Unlike detection only tools, Everfox EverShield Insider Risk platform is effective not only at identifying, but in helping to prevent Insider Threats and Risk. While competitor tools focus their efforts on merely detecting insider threats, Everfox takes a much more pro-active and operationally proven approach to mitigating insider risk. Everfox Insider Risk Solutions were designed by analysts for analysts to help identify risk pre-event rather than merely detecting incidents post event. Everfox solutions are designed and purpose built for an effective “Critical Pathway (CPIR) model of Insider Risk Management.
The Critical Pathway for Insider Risk Management (CPIR)
The CPIR model outlines the stages and factors that can lead to insider threats. It helps organizations understand and mitigate these threats through examining the pathway of events and factors leading to insider acts.
The CPIR model looks at four key factors of prevention: - Dan Velez, 2025. Decisions: EverInsight or a SIEM, [Unpublished].
- Predisposing Factors: These are personal characteristics or vulnerabilities that can make an individual more susceptible to insider risk.
- Stressors: These are external events or situations that can put pressure on an individual and exacerbate their pre-dispositions. Stressors can be work-related, such as job dissatisfaction, performance issues, financial problems or relationship difficulties.
- Concerning Behaviors: These are observable actions that may indicate an increased risk of insider threat. They can include changes in behavior, such as increased absenteeism or decreased productivity, or suspicious activity, such as unauthorized access to sensitive information.
- Organizational Response: This refers to how the organization responds to concerning behaviors. A poor response can escalate the situation and increase the likelihood of an insider incident. Everfox alerts present the organization with the opportunity to act and to assess the results of the mitigation efforts.
To achieve the benefits of the CPIR prevention model, Everfox employs a series of innovations, behavioral sciences, analytics and technologies including Everfox early adoption of Artificial Intelligence (Ai) innovations within our behavioral analytics solutions.
Everfox EverInsight brings state-of-the-art science, leveraging advanced psycholinguistics and proprietary algorithms protected by 10 U.S. patents. This technology identifies troubling content in emails, texts and other communications. Delivering indicators and early warning signs as visualizations and reports to insider risk analysts. Guiding their assessment of risk with the tools and dashboards needed to make proactive and informed decisions. This includes the use of onboard Ai tools to analyze subjective information like text or speech, to identify early warning signs of employee dissatisfaction which could lead to increased risks by trusted insiders.
Unlike competitor tools that tout AI as part of sorting through their detection data, Everfox uses AI as part of evaluating user behavior collections, for greater insight into leading indicators of potential risk.
As part of the EverShield Insider Risk Solutions Platform, Everfox Linguistic Analysis provides initial screening to identify employees with increased levels of insider risk factors. This enables organizations to address employee wellness early with opportunity to intervene and potentially disrupt users who may be on a critical pathway to insider risk.
In the recent Forrester report titled the Total Economic Impact of Everfox EverShield (opens a new window) an Everfox customer stated;
“We want to be proactive and avoid bad outcomes, so we will first try to talk to the employee to discourage certain behaviors - so in this way reducing the risk of bad outcomes.” - Senior Associate, IRMP, Consulting Services
Interviewees in the study also highlighted that by using EverShield they were able to avoid costs associated with employees that were unhappy and wanted to cause damage prior to leaving the organization.
“They were planning to delete all the files on the file-share,” explained the security operations manager, service provider.
“We stopped the data exfiltration of protected data on a USB device on multiple occasions. That risk if lost would be in the millions, one of them had 8,000 records and it was PII, so you can put a dollar amount to that,” the Security Operations Manager, told Forrester.
Interviewees in the study further stated realized cost savings of using Everfox EverShield in reducing per incidents cost by preventing rather than merely detecting insider risk.
“While overall there have been budget cuts this year in IT and security, our management did not want to scale back on insider threat, which shows how important it is.” - Security Operations Manager, Service Provider
Summary
As competitors make noise about their detection tools, Everfox has more than 25 years of proven experience helping high consequence organizations identify and mitigate risk beyond detection. Everfox customers who use EverShield are achieving high value and return on investment. Everfox has operationally proven, cutting-edge innovations, patents and proprietary tools designed by security analysts. Stop wasting cycles with other tools that tout data sorting of detections. Even those who use ai to sort detections. Talk instead to an Everfox Insider Risk mitigation expert today about preventing insider risk.
[1] - Cyber360 (opens a new window) Report
Alan Fredrickson
Product Marketing Manager, Insider Risk Solutions
Alan Frederickson is a Product Marketing Manager at Everfox, supporting Insider Risk Solutions for over two decades, as well as Everfox Cross Doman access and transfer solutions for more than a decade. Alan was Creative Director for Oakley Networks UAM solutions when it launched in 2001, leading to acquisition by Raytheon in 2007. As the demand for high-value, efficient, and innovative Insider Threat Solutions increases, Alan continues to champion Everfox mission to provide critical cybersecurity solutions to global commercial, government, and regulated industries.