When Trust Becomes the Threat: How Financial Institutions Can Protect Against Insider Risk

In cybersecurity, we often picture the threat as external, like a hacker breaching firewalls from a distant location. Yet for financial institutions, the most dangerous threat may already have a security badge. A recent Globe and Mail investigation into a Royal Bank of Canada employee accused of accessing client records shows how the modern breach doesn’t require breaking in. It just requires logging in.

That single sentence reframes the problem. The perimeter is no longer the only battleground; the real challenge is how data is accessed, not just who’s allowed on the network.

The Insider Threat Is Growing — and Changing Shape

Ponemon’s latest global research shows insider-risk costs continuing to rise year over year. In Canada, incident responders and intelligence agencies report similar upward pressure, with KPMG’s 2024 Canada cyber review and CSIS’s 2024 Public Report both flagging insider/espionage risks as material concerns. Deloitte’s 2025 insider-risk study found that:

• 76% of organizations experienced personal-information theft or data exfiltration in the past year.

• 47% faced incidents involving foreign or ideologically motivated insiders.

• 41% reported insider fraud or workplace-related misconduct.

Those numbers show that protecting endpoints and firewalls is no longer enough. When data is accessible, it’s reproducible, whether by download, screenshot, or even smartphone photos combined with OCR tools. In other words, the weakest link isn’t the device, it’s the authorized human sitting behind it.

The Limits of Lockdown Security

Most banks have invested heavily in endpoint controls and network lockdowns. Devices are configured to prevent USB transfers, printing, and unauthorized network connections. Yet these controls only address how data leaves, not who should access it in the first place. Once a user can view data, the ability to reproduce it is effectively unlimited. This is the paradox of trust: the same access that enables productivity can enable compromise.

This is why institutions gravitate toward configurable systems like Salesforce and other platforms that at least allow rule-based access governance. But even there, complexity often undermines protection. Misconfigured profiles, over-permissive Active Directory (AD) groups, and rarely-audited permissions are common. At enterprise scale, these problems multiply. Banks and wealth managers with thousands of employees often inherit stale AD groups and static permissions that haven’t been reviewed for months, and sometimes even years. Over time, access privileges drift far beyond business need.

RBAC: The Forgotten Foundation of Data Security

At the heart of insider risk is an access problem, and that means Role-Based Access Control (RBAC).

RBAC defines what data each role can view, modify, or share. But in practice, managing these controls is painful:

• High employee turnover creates a flood of onboarding and offboarding events.

• Complex legacy systems don’t allow granular access segmentation.

• Business users bypass slow approval processes to get work done, unaware of the risks.

• Lack of RBAC hygiene leads to over-entitled users and invisible exposure.

When RBAC is rigid, ungoverned, or poorly integrated, organizations often respond by loosening controls for convenience which creates precisely the scenario that insider risk exploits. Effective data protection requires living RBAC: dynamic, reviewed, and enforced consistently across every system where sensitive information resides.

The Data Itself Is the Prize

To appreciate why RBAC matters, consider the kinds of data available inside a financial institution:

• High-net-worth client files — KYC, net worth statements, tax records, and beneficiary details.

• Corporate ownership and lending structures — often exposing interconnected assets and entities.

• Authentication artefacts — passports, driver’s licences, SINs.

• Internal workflow documentation — control matrices, approval paths, and exception handling notes.

On the dark web, these records are a commodity. Synthetic identities built from authentic data can sell for hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of dollars. Full financial dossiers, particularly those tied to corporate or political figures, are especially valuable. A single insider with uncontrolled access to “all that data in the vault” doesn’t just pose an internal risk; they become a vector for organized crime, fraud networks, and even foreign intelligence operations.

Where Traditional Tools Fail

Legacy document repositories and shared drives were never built for modern data governance. They lack the contextual control and auditability required for zero-trust environments. Even DLP (Data Loss Prevention) tools can only alert, not prevent, once a legitimate user opens the file. The gap is architectural. Banks protect their perimeter and endpoints, but few protect within, where data is accessed, shared, and reproduced. That’s where the next evolution lies: protecting access to the data itself.

The Digital Vault: Redefining Internal Trust

SideDrawer’s Digital Vault introduces protection inside the perimeter — where access control, not just network control, becomes the core of defence.

1. RBAC-Driven Access Governance

SideDrawer implements fine-grained Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) down to the folder, client, or document level. Each role is pre-defined and dynamically enforced, preventing the drift that plagues AD-based access models. This ensures that employees see only the data relevant to their function and nothing more.

2. Zero-Knowledge and Least Privilege

Users cannot access or even view content outside their defined scope. Even system administrators have no visibility into client data without explicit permission. This drastically reduces opportunity for internal misuse and meets the spirit of privacy-by-design.

3. Immutable Audit Trails

Every view, share, or export is recorded and time-stamped. Institutions can prove compliance, detect anomalies, and investigate breaches faster with complete transparency into who touched what, when, and why.

4. Secure Collaboration by Default

Instead of exporting files to email or shared drives, teams collaborate directly within the vault. This not only enforces RBAC rules but also prevents data exfiltration through unsecured channels, which is a common workaround when processes feel cumbersome.

Protecting the Organization and the User

The goal of a digital vault is not just to limit access but to enable responsible collaboration. By removing the temptation to bypass process, banks protect both their data and their employees. When access is controlled, auditable, and easily managed, business users no longer need to “work around IT.” Compliance becomes the default state of work, not an afterthought.

A New Standard for Internal Defence

The lesson from the Globe and Mail investigation is clear: even the most advanced perimeter defences can’t compensate for weak internal governance. The future of resilience lies in protecting data at its core through enforceable, auditable, and user-friendly access control. SideDrawer’s Digital Vault gives institutions the ability to know, and limit, exactly who can touch “all that data in the vault.”

Because in today’s environment, trust is no longer a default. It’s a permission.