Enemy at the Water Cooler: True Stories of Insider Threats and Enterprise Security Management Countermeasures

by Brian Contos

The book covers a decade of work with some of the largest commercial and government agencies around the world in addressing cyber security related to malicious insiders (trusted employees, contractors, and partners). It explores organized crime, terrorist threats, and hackers. It addresses the steps organizations must take to address insider threats at a people, process, and technology level.

Today’s headlines are littered with news of identity thieves, organized cyber criminals, corporate espionage, nation-state threats, and terrorists. They represent the next wave of security threats but still possess nowhere near the devastating potential of the most insidious threat: the insider. This is not the bored 16-year-old hacker. We are talking about insiders like you and me, trusted employees with access to information - consultants, contractors, partners, visitors, vendors, and cleaning crews. Anyone in an organization’s building or networks that possesses some level of trust.

304 pages, Paperback

First published August 23, 2006