Insider Threat Response Playbook — Free Mind Map
Visual playbook for responding to insider risk — detect signals, investigate carefully (legal first), confirm intent, contain. Free mind map.
Insider threats are the slowest, quietest incidents. The investigation has to be careful — legal first, anonymous during triage, then the people process. Here's the path.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why is investigating insider threats different from external attacks?
Two reasons. (1) PRIVACY: you're investigating a real human in your org — local data protection laws (GDPR, state privacy acts, country-specific employee privacy rights) constrain what you can monitor and what you can use as evidence. (2) JUSTIFICATION: most 'spikes' have legitimate business reasons (ending a project, transferring to another team). False accusations damage careers and trust. Always engage legal + HR before investigating, and keep cases anonymised during triage to avoid bias. Purview Insider Risk Management has anonymisation built in.
What's the difference between malicious and negligent insider risk?
Malicious — intent to harm, exfiltrate, sabotage. Often departing employees taking IP, disgruntled employees leaking, sometimes coerced (financial trouble, threats). Smaller volume but higher per-incident impact. Negligent — well-meaning users making mistakes (oversharing, weak passwords, lost device, sending wrong file). Massively larger volume. Containment + investigation differs: malicious requires legal/HR/possibly law enforcement; negligent is usually training + targeted controls. Most IRM platforms (Purview included) try to score these differently.
Should I monitor employees more closely?
Carefully. Microsoft Purview IRM is designed to MINIMISE false positives and protect employee privacy by default — anonymised triage, signal-based scoring not surveillance, business-justification context. Increasing monitoring without clear policy + legal review damages trust faster than insider threats damage data. The right approach: clear acceptable-use policy upfront (so employees know what's monitored), limit monitoring to what's necessary, and run incidents through HR/legal — not security alone.
What's the most effective preventive control?
Departing-employee playbook. Most insider data theft happens in the 30-60 day window before someone leaves (after they've accepted another offer but before their last day). Tactics: (1) HR feeds 'departing' status into IRM as a signal so monitoring tunes up automatically, (2) just-in-time access reviews triggered on departure notice, (3) sensitivity labels + DLP that prevent bulk download, (4) manager training to recognise behavioural changes. Single biggest reduction in data exfil comes from this one workflow.