Key Insights:

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▶  SMBs in the U.S. face approximately 2,200 internal security attacks daily, how secure is your organization?

▶  Failing to detect insider threats early can lead to substantial financial losses, reputational damage, and operational disruptions.

▶  While some organizations turn to UBA tools, research shows that UBA may not be the most effective way to prevent insider threats.

▶ SMBs are now turning to a new insider threat solution that is proving to be more affordable, effective, and easier to use.

Haunted by the thought of unseen security risks that could put your entire business in jeopardy? Not sure what tool is best to protect your business?

While traditional security tools can help businesses make great strides in preventing external threats, they lack the visibility necessary for insider threat detection. This is why many businesses turn to user behavior analytics (UBA) to detect abnormal employee behavior and identify potential insider threats before they wreak havoc.

But UBA tools often fall short with their lack of proactive, instant alerts and can drain resources and budgets, especially for SMBs. 

Ready to stop compromising on security and start protecting your business, on all fronts?
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Why should you care about insider threats?

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SMBs in the U.S. face approximately 2,200 internal security attacks daily.

‍Insufficient insider threat detection can cost your company big time. The average cost of an insider threat event is estimated at $15 million - a cost that could prove fatal for many SMBs. 

While the financial loss can be devastating, your company’s reputation will also take a hit. Operations can be disrupted, data breached, and intellectual property stolen. 

What’s so tricky about detecting insider threats? Spotting them can be especially difficult since employees have legitimate access to sensitive systems. What’s worse, malicious actions are often indistinguishable from normal activities. 
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What is user behavior analytics (UBA)?

UBA is a cybersecurity strategy that involves painstakingly tracking how people use systems over an extended period to spot unusual behavior, like insider attacks or hacked accounts. They tend to focus more on analyzing long-term trends rather than providing the quick, proactive response businesses need when a threat is unfolding in real time.

While this method may be okay for large enterprises with inexhaustible resources, for most SMBs, it simply isn’t realistic. This makes UBA not the best fit for most companies. 

How else can you protect against insider threats?

If UBA is not aligned with your needs as an SMB, there are other options:

Do Nothing: You may be thinking - I haven’t had any issues yet, why should I do anything now to prevent insider threats? But this is risky thinking. Insider threats aren’t a problem…until they are. And when they are, the damage can put your entire business in jeopardy and by that time, it may be irreversible. Is it really worth the risk?

Monitor Manually: Another option is to monitor insider threats manually, without the help of any tools. But this approach is time-consuming, prone to human error, and extremely ineffective. Detecting insider threats requires studying patterns and behaviors that are nearly impossible to detect without an automated system that can analyze data in real time. Not to mention, as your business grows, this approach rapidly becomes unsustainable as the risk of threats increases. 

Use Real-Time ITD Monitoring: Software to monitor employee computer activity like Insightful is another powerful tool designed to detect insider threats. Unlike traditional UBA tools, Insightful is intuitive and easy to set up, without the need for complicated configurations. It offers real-time monitoring, allowing you to identify and respond to suspicious behavior as it happens. 
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So now that you know your best options are UBA or Insightful, let’s take a look at these two tools side by side, so you can determine which is the best for your business.
 

Choosing the Right Tool: Insightful or UBA?

When choosing the right insider threat tools for your business, the decision often hinges on whether you need a solution that delivers quick, real-time threat detection or one that’s more concerned with analyzing long-term behavioral patterns at the expense of immediate action.

This comparison between Insightful and UBA will highlight which solution truly meets the needs of your organization:
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Proactive Detection vs. Behavioral Analysis

UBA takes its time analyzing user behavior over an extended period, establishing what's considered "normal" and flagging any deviations, like unusual activity or access. This often results in a flood of false positives, overwhelming IT teams with unnecessary alerts. This not only slows down response times but also increases the risk of missing real threats due to alert fatigue.

Insightful prioritizes real-time, proactive detection of insider threats, minimizing false positives and providing instant alerts when risky behavior occurs. This allows you to react immediately, ensuring that your team stays focused on real dangers and keeps your business safe without getting bogged down by irrelevant warnings.
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Depth of Forensics

UBA might be fine if you want to get a sense of user behavior over a long period. It’s good at digging into trends that slowly develop, helping you spot threats that might be creeping up over time. 

But here’s the catch—if you need to know exactly what happened during a specific incident, UBA might leave you guessing. It’s more about broad patterns and less about giving you the immediate, detailed breakdown the moment something goes wrong. 

Insightful, however, doesn’t just show you trends; it delivers a minute-by-minute playbook of everything leading up to a security incident. This detailed logging makes it easy to pinpoint the exact cause and take action immediately. If you need real-time insights as events unfold, Insightful is the tool you want.
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Integration, Usability, & Scalability 

UBA can be a puzzle when it comes to fitting into your existing systems because it often requires integrating with multiple security tools, customizing configurations, and managing large data sets. This complexity can lead to time-consuming setups, compatibility issues, and the need for specialized knowledge to get everything running smoothly.

UBA often requires additional tools like complex SIEM security solutions to function at its best, making setup, daily use, and scalability a headache, especially if you're not a large enterprise with a dedicated IT team.

On the other hand, Insightful plays nicely with a wide range of apps and tools, making it easy to slot into your current workflow. It’s designed to be user-friendly, focusing on real-time management and scalability, a necessity for growing businesses.

If you’re looking for something that’s easy to set up, scale, and use without a lot of extra hassle, Insightful has you covered.
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Cost-Effectiveness

UBA hits hard on the wallet with big upfront costs, pricey licenses, and ongoing expenses for maintenance and specialized staff. For SMBs, this can be a real strain on the budget.

Insightful, is much easier on your finances. It comes with lower initial costs and doesn't require constant spending on maintenance or extra staff. This makes Insightful a much better fit for SMBs that need solid security without breaking the bank.

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Best Fit for Your Business

UBA is designed for organizations with deep pockets and the time to dive into long-term behavioral analysis. It’s nice if you have the resources to take a slow, strategic approach to threat detection. But for most SMBs, it’s overkill, adding unnecessary complexity and costs that you don’t really need.

Insightful’s user monitoring software is tailored for businesses that need to move quickly and efficiently, especially those with remote or hybrid teams. It cuts through the noise to give you immediate, actionable insights into insider threats, so you can keep your business secure without drowning in data analysis. 

If you're looking for a solution that's both effective and straightforward, Insightful is the smart choice.

5 Reasons Why SMBs are Opting for Insightful Over UBA

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Here’s how Insightful’s tools for the monitoring of employees in the workplace work to keep your business secure:
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Proactively Protect Your Business with Custom Security Alerts

Quickly identify and respond to high-risk activities by configuring alerts to your organization’s needs. For example, you can set an alert to notify you if an employee tries to access restricted financial records without proper authorization. 

Set up these alerts by choosing the type, naming it, and defining the conditions, such as specific URLs, app usage, or keyword detections.

This proactive approach helps prevent unauthorized access, protects sensitive data, and bolsters the overall security of your organization. 

Take Vitality Medical as an example, a company where data privacy is one of the highest concerns. Vitality Medical uses Insightful to enhance security protocols and reduce the likelihood of malicious insider activity by ensuring that employees know their actions are being tracked.
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Sharpen Decision-Making with Activity Logs 

By monitoring employee internet usage and regularly checking detailed activity logs to understand the context of alerts, you can make informed decisions about potential threats. 

Reviewing the logs might reveal an employee accessing confidential client information shortly before resigning, prompting further investigation. Insightful provides comprehensive logs that can be filtered to help pinpoint suspicious behavior.
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Make Balanced Decisions using Productivity & Security Data 

Insightful’s tools for monitoring remote workers’ productivity yield valuable productivity data. Use productivity insights alongside alerts to distinguish between normal productivity variations and real security threats. 

If an alert shows an employee using unauthorized software, but productivity data indicates it’s helping their performance on a critical project, you might decide to allow it temporarily. Insightful's productivity monitoring tools and security data help you make balanced decisions.
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Spot Unusual Patterns with Time & Attendance Tracking

Use Insightful’s automated time and attendance tracking to spot patterns indicating insider threats, like unusual clock-in times, overworked employees, or those working late hours who might make mistakes leading to insider threats. 

By setting specific conditions for clock-in times and monitoring irregular working hours, administrators can receive alerts for any deviations that need further investigation.
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Stay Committed to Data Security with Alerts & Logs

Use Insightful’s logs and alerts for audit and compliance reporting to show proactive management of insider threats. 

During an audit, you can provide detailed reports on how often alerts were triggered and the actions taken, demonstrating your organization’s commitment to data security. Insightful’s detailed logging and alert system makes it easy to compile and present the necessary data for audits.
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Conclusion

If you’re an SMB looking for a UBA solution with real-time alerts, Insightful’s insider threat detection is the alternative you’ve been looking for. Insightful’s employee software monitoring tools offer real-time monitoring and proactive insider threat detection and are a more affordable, user-friendly solution for SMBs.

Still worried about costs and complexity? Unlike UBA, Insightful is affordable, easy to integrate, and automates monitoring to save you time and effort. Without insider threat detection you risk losing everything, with Insightful, you only stand to gain.

Ready to secure your organization against insider threats? Sign up for a free trial of Insightful today—no credit card required. 

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Updated on: August 29th, 2024