A group of researchers from three Montreal universities want to better equip companies with cybersecurity by tackling the “insider threats” that affect many organizations.
Professors from Polytechnique Montréal, HEC Montréal and the University of Montreal are launching a project on Wednesday during which they will work with two financial institutions, the National Bank and Desjardins, as well as companies specializing in cybersecurity, Mondata and Qohash, in addition of the non-profit organization Cybereco.
The objective of the initiative called “Insider Threat Alliance” aims to prevent cybersecurity risks within an organization, explains the project director and professor in the Department of Computer Engineering and Software Engineering at Polytechnique Montréal, Frédéric Cuppens.
Internal threats
“This is a major problem. It is estimated that at least half of the risks for companies come from internal risks and there is little work on this at the academic level. There is a lot of work that is more interested in external risks, namely cyberattacks,” he tells The Canadian Press.
Mr. Cuppens is also the director of the Multidisciplinary Institute in Cybersecurity and Cyber Resilience (IMC2), also born from a collaboration of the three educational institutions and under which the project experts will work.
Internal threats can consist of employee behavior which, through malice, negligence or inadvertence, opens the door to an attack and potential intrusion into the company’s computer network.
Mr. Cuppens gives the example of phishing, the fraudulent or malicious source of which generally comes from outside — through an email for example — but which can have consequences on the company’s activities.
“This problem is international. There is no company today that can say that it does not potentially have internal threats. It’s something that’s unfortunately very universal,” the professor mentions.
Adapted solutions
As part of the project, the group of university researchers will first collect data in order to identify risky processes in different organizations. For each of them, it will then develop a solution adapted to their needs, part of which will be based on artificial intelligence.
Their work will also look at company subcontractors that may also be linked to security threats.
Mr Cuppens insists that solutions will take into consideration respect for the work of the staff of the organizations involved.
“We want the employee to be at the center of the thinking. The objective is really to improve safe behaviors and reduce unsafe behaviors. We want to respect ethical and regulatory principles,” he says, adding that socio-technical and economic factors will also be considered.
The five-year project is linked to a new institutional research chair. “Insider Threat Alliance” will benefit from funding of nearly $5.4 million, notably from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.