Understanding Insider Threats: The Silent Saboteurs of 2026
Every organization houses sensitive assets that threat actors exploit. Proprietary trade secrets, intellectual property, and personally identifiable information (PII) are not just the lifeblood of modern enterprises; they are highly lucrative commodities in the illicit underground economy.
The Insider Threat Landscape in 2025
In 2025, Flashpoint documented 91,321 instances of insider recruiting, advertising, and discussions about insider-related illicit activities. This staggering number highlights a critical truth: it’s often far easier and more efficient for threat actors to recruit someone with inside access than to breach a multi-million dollar security infrastructure from the outside.
An insider threat can be any individual with authorized access, whether they act out of financial gain, ideological grievances, or even simple error. With just a single keystroke, insiders can compromise entire systems. To protect against these internal risks, Flashpoint actively monitors illicit forums and marketplaces where threats are solicited.
Mapping the 2025 Insider Threat Activity
Between January and November 2025, Flashpoint uncovered:
- 91,321 posts related to insider solicitation and service advertising.
- 10,475 channels involving insider-related activities.
- 17,612 total authors contributing these discussions.
On average, this translates to 1,162 insider-related posts published each month. Telegram emerged as a prominent medium for collaboration among insiders and threat actors, facilitating various forms of engagement, including extortion attempts targeting employees to gain inside knowledge.
Insider Threats by Industry
The telecommunications sector emerged as the industry with the highest level of insider-related activity in 2025. This isn’t surprising, given its central role in identity verification and its vulnerability to techniques like SIM swapping—a fraudulent method where employees are duped into rerouting a victim’s phone number to a SIM controlled by attackers, allowing them to bypass SMS-based two-factor authentication.
Flashpoint analysts noted 12,783 posts where the targeting and detail level were particularly alarming.
Top Industries for Insider Advertising Services:
- Telecom
- Financial
- Retail
- Technology
Top Industries for Threat Actors Soliciting Access:
- Technology
- Financial
- Telecom
- Retail
Notable Insider Threat Cases from 2025
Examining specific incidents sheds light on the various ways insider threats manifested in 2025:
| Type of Incident | Description |
|---|---|
| Malicious | Nine employees accessed the personal information of over 94,000 individuals, making illegal purchases using altered food stamp cards. |
| Nonmalicious | An unprotected database from a Chinese IoT firm leaked 2.7 billion records, exposing 1.17 TB of sensitive data and plaintext passwords. |
| Malicious | An employee for a foreign military contractor was bribed to leak confidential information to threat actors. |
| Malicious | A contractor for a cryptocurrency firm sold customer data to threat actors and recruited others into the scheme, leading to the termination of 300 employees and compromising 69,000 customer accounts. |
| Malicious | Two contractors deleted sensitive documents and databases belonging to the IRS and US General Services Administration. |
Recognizing Early Warning Signs
To prevent insider incidents, it’s essential to monitor potential warning signs, both technical and non-technical.
Non-Technical Warning Signs
-
Behavioral Indicators: Look for observable changes like erratic or impulsive actions, noncompliance with established rules, social withdrawal, or unusual communications with competitors.
-
Financial Changes: An employee’s sudden financial troubles or unexplained financial windfalls can be a red flag. Those facing financial distress may gravitate towards illicit activities for monetary gain.
-
Abnormal Access Behavior: Be aware of employees resisting oversight, making unjustified requests for sensitive information, or exhibiting excessive protectiveness regarding their access privileges.
-
Difficult Departures: Employees leaving under negative conditions may pose a greater risk, as they may be motivated to exploit their past access out of spite.
-
Odd Working Hours: Insiders might exploit after-hours work periods, which typically have less monitoring, to engage in illicit activities.
- Unusual Travel: Employees undertaking unexplained overseas travel might be attempting to establish contacts with foreign threat actors.
Technical Warning Signs
-
Unauthorized Devices: The use of personal or unauthorized devices for work increases the risk profile, whether through malicious intent or human error.
-
Abnormal Network Traffic: Unusual spikes in network traffic or strange patterns can signal potential insider threats. This includes strange protocol usage or increased activity outside normal hours.
-
Irregular Access Patterns: Monitoring data access that falls outside the employee’s job scope can identify individuals mapping access privileges for exfiltration.
- Mass Data Downloads: Sudden, unauthorized large data transfers or unusual coding patterns may be significant indicators of looming threats.
Looking Ahead: Insider Threats in 2026
As 2026 approaches, insider threats continue to be a vital concern for organizations. Ransomware groups and initial access actors are likely to amplify their recruitment efforts targeting insiders, leveraging techniques rooted in social engineering. Following Telegram’s crackdown on illicit channels, threat actors may shift to more encrypted platforms, like Signal, complicating monitoring efforts.
Though advancements in AI technology may help in identifying and mitigating insider risks, threat actors may also exploit AI capabilities to further their objectives. The question remains: Is your organization prepared to spot these early warning signs? With the evolving landscape of insider threats, being proactive is no longer optional; it’s essential for safeguarding your enterprise’s critical assets.
