As someone who has seen breaches like Coinbase’s, I know how a quiet inside action can blow up fast. In May 2025, bribed support agents and contractors leaked customer data, exposing about 70,000 users and leading to remediation costs that could reach $400 million. The CEO offered a $20 million reward to find the perpetrators, which shows how traditional controls can fail when insiders collude.

Why insider threats are now a board-level problem

Insider incidents are not rare, and they are expensive. Recent industry figures put the annual cost of insider risk near $17.4 million when you add detection, containment, legal work, and remediation. Credential theft alone often costs organizations hundreds of thousands per event. These numbers mean insiders are not an IT problem only. They affect customers, finances, and reputation.

When a person with valid access acts maliciously, perimeter defenses and signature checks often miss the activity. That is why watching for odd behavior is essential. You must see how people use data, not only whether they are allowed to see it.

What breaks in legacy systems

• Many older platforms cannot pull cloud logs, SaaS telemetry, or vendor portal events quickly, which leaves blind spots.

• Quarterly access reviews and manual evidence collection slow audits and do not stop active misuse.

• Alerts often come as noisy lists rather than clear reasons, so analysts get overwhelmed and real threats slip through.

Start by mapping how your systems connect to cloud providers, SaaS apps, and vendor tools. That map shows what you can see now and where a bad actor could act without being noticed.

How AI incident management and behavioral monitoring help

Feed helpdesk tickets, CRM access, endpoint telemetry, cloud API calls, and privileged access logs into a continuous stream. Use that data to learn what normal work looks like for each role. When a support agent suddenly exports large customer lists, or a contractor views records they do not usually touch, the system can spot the pattern, score the risk, and explain the top signals in plain language.

Good solutions do more than show a score. They give a short summary that says why the alert fired, list the top three signals, and recommend a next step. That readable context lets analysts act fast without digging for evidence.

Approaches that let teams chain small AI steps together create these short, clear summaries with less engineering effort. When teams see the why behind an alert, they spend less time guessing and more time containing the issue.

Why containment needs to be instant

Detecting suspicious behavior is only half the solution. Stopping a suspicious action quickly prevents damage. Technologies like ZeroDwell style containment can pause a session, isolate a process, or block an export while the response team reviews the event. That micro-containment gives analysts breathing room and prevents a small incident from becoming a headline.

Containment also reduces the time evidence is scattered. It keeps the environment intact so investigators can see what happened without losing key logs.

A practical playbook you can use

• Instrument high-value touchpoints first: helpdesk, CRM, privileged access systems, cloud IAM, and vendor portals.

• Baseline behavior by role and test detection rules on a limited group to tune false positives.

• Require human review for any containment or high-impact action, and attach a short, explainable summary to every high-priority alert.

These steps create early wins while keeping people firmly in control of sensitive actions.

How to stop collusion, not just single-user mischief

Make outsider and temporary access harder to abuse. Use shorter-lived credentials, mandatory recertification, and multi-party attestation for high-risk exports. Require co-signatures for vendor access to critical lists. These process changes mean one bribed person cannot, on their own, cause large-scale harm.

Bring procurement, legal, and security into the same review cycles so vendor behavior is visible and accountable.

Is the investment worth it?

Yes. When incidents can cost millions, tools and controls that cut detection time and reduce damage pay for themselves. Build a simple two-year model for leadership: list current yearly exposure, estimate how faster detection shortens containment, and show reduced remediation spend. Include avoided regulatory fines and loss of customer trust. Those numbers usually make the business case clear.

A 90-day insider-resilience sprint

Weeks 0 to 4: Inventory critical data flows and privileged accounts. Map who touches what and where.

Weeks 5 to 8: Turn on streaming telemetry for three high-value sources and pilot a behavioral model on a controlled user group.

Weeks 9 to 12: Add short containment rules, integrate legal and communications for escalation, and run a live simulation.

This short program yields measurable results that you can present to the board and use to expand protections throughout the organization.

Legal readiness and evidence preservation

Make forensic trails automatic so timelines are clean and defensible. Tie detection thresholds to disclosure policies so legal and communications know when to escalate. Fast, clean evidence reduces guesswork and helps meet regulator expectations.

Stop the next Coinbase moment before it starts

Every organization is one insider away from a costly incident. AI incident response, behavioral anomaly monitoring, and instant containment tools like ZeroDwell help your teams spot collusion early and stop damage while it is still small. These tools do not replace human judgment. They give your people clear context and time to act.

If you want a practical walkthrough tailored to where your users touch sensitive data, visit iRM’s Contact Us page and schedule a short strategy call.