Microsoft Unified Audit Log

A subject engages in unauthorized conduct that amounts to harassment or discriminatory behavior within the workplace, targeting individuals or groups based on protected characteristics, such as race, gender, religion, or other personal attributes. Incidents of harassment and discrimination may expose the organization to legal risks, potential reputational damage, and regulatory penalties. Additionally, individuals affected by such behavior may be at higher risk of retaliating or disengaging from their work, potentially leading to further insider risks.

Data loss refers to the unauthorized, unintentional, or malicious disclosure, exposure, alteration, or destruction of sensitive organizational data caused by the actions of an insider. It encompasses incidents in which critical information (such as intellectual property, regulated personal data, or operationally sensitive content) is compromised due to insider behavior. This behavior may arise from deliberate exfiltration, negligent data handling, policy circumvention, or misuse of access privileges. Data loss can occur through manual actions (e.g., unauthorized file transfers or improper document handling) or through technical vectors (e.g., insecure APIs, misconfigured cloud services, or shadow IT systems).

Regulatory non-compliance refers to insider actions that lead to breaches of laws, regulations, or industry standards governing organizational conduct. These violations may arise from deliberate misconduct, willful disregard, or negligent failure to follow established legal or compliance frameworks. In many cases, insiders exploit their access or authority to bypass controls, misrepresent information, or act in ways that conflict with regulatory obligations.

Incidents of regulatory non-compliance may involve unauthorized exports, sanctions breaches, anti-competitive behavior, or unreported conflicts of interest. Such infringements not only expose the organization to fines, legal action, and operational restrictions but also erode trust with customers, regulators, and partners.

The subject grants unauthorized access to organizational collaboration platforms, such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, Confluence, or equivalent tools, thereby exposing them to internal information, workflows, or discussions outside their clearance or role-based access. This behavior may occur by inviting a guest account, elevating access permissions for an existing contact, or bypassing formal onboarding channels to enable out-of-policy access.

Such unauthorized collaboration introduces a high-risk vector for information leakage, intellectual property exposure, and unmonitored data sharing. In many cases, these platforms contain embedded files, chat histories, integration logs, and operational metadata that extend beyond what the subject may intend to share. Even when performed under the guise of productivity or convenience, this behavior constitutes a clear infringement of acceptable use policies and undermines formal access governance structures.

The action is often difficult to detect retrospectively if audit logging for guest access is not enabled or if collaboration platforms lack integration with centralized identity providers. Investigators should consider whether the access was temporary or persistent, and whether the subject demonstrated awareness of the policy violation (e.g., through attempts to obscure or justify the behavior).

A subject may search for or otherwise explore files on a Collaboration Platform (such as SharePoint, OneDrive, Confluence, etc) to identify sensitive or valuable information.

The subject modifies or downgrades the sensitivity label of a file in an attempt to bypass DLP or other security controls.

A subject misappropriates, discloses, or exploits proprietary information, trade secrets, creative works, or internally developed knowledge obtained through their role within the organization. This form of data loss typically involves the unauthorized transfer or use of intellectual assets—such as source code, engineering designs, research data, algorithms, product roadmaps, marketing strategies, or proprietary business processes—without the organization's consent.

Intellectual property theft can occur during employment or around the time of offboarding, and may involve methods such as unauthorized file transfers, use of personal storage devices, cloud synchronization, or improper sharing with third parties. The consequences can include competitive disadvantage, breach of contractual obligations, and significant legal and reputational harm.

The subject deliberately deletes emails - either sent, received, or both - with the intent to obstruct investigative visibility, remove evidence of policy violations, or eliminate traces of communication relevant to an insider event. While routine inbox maintenance is common, patterns of targeted deletion may indicate purposeful concealment.

The subject inserts, deletes, alters, substitutes, or suppresses data retained within an organizational system so that the authoritative record becomes inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, or unreliable.

Affected information may include database entries, business records, documents, stored communications, transactions, customer records, inventory values, measurements, or case information.

A subject enables or uses a communication feature that automatically deletes messages after they are read, after a defined period, or when a conversation is closed, with the intention of reducing the communication evidence available to investigators.

The subject may use disappearing-message functionality within an approved corporate platform or through a non-corporate messaging application. Automatic deletion may be configured for an individual conversation, group, channel, workspace, or account. The subject may also change an existing conversation from persistent retention to temporary retention before exchanging information connected to an infringement.

This behavior differs from the manual deletion of corporate or non-corporate messages because the removal mechanism is established before or during the communication. Messages may disappear without a separate deletion action being performed after each message is sent.

Investigators should examine when the disappearing-message setting was enabled, who enabled it, the configured retention period, which participants were involved, and whether the setting was changed shortly before sensitive or suspicious communications occurred. The ordinary availability of an ephemeral messaging feature does not establish anti-forensic intent; classification should require evidence that the feature was deliberately used to reduce investigative visibility.

A subject deletes a substantial volume of messages, conversations, threads, channels, or communication history to remove or materially reduce the records available for investigation.

Bulk deletion may involve selecting and deleting multiple messages, repeatedly deleting individual messages within a short period, clearing an entire conversation, removing channel history, deleting archived communications, or using scripts, administrative tools, application programming interfaces, or automation to remove content at scale.

The behavior may occur after the subject becomes aware of an investigation, disciplinary process, access review, audit, legal dispute, or anticipated offboarding. It may also occur immediately before the subject conducts another infringement where prior communications could reveal planning, coordination, relationships, or intent.

The significance of bulk deletion should be assessed against the subject’s normal messaging activity, the amount of content removed, the time period affected, the platforms involved, and whether the deleted communications related to known subjects, external parties, sensitive projects, or active investigations.

Investigators should identify deletion event volume, timestamps, conversation identifiers, affected participants, client or application source, administrative actions, and any corresponding data preserved through retention or legal-hold systems.

A subject uses administrative, moderation, ownership, compliance, or delegated platform privileges to delete messages created by another subject or to remove communication records from a shared organizational environment.

The subject may delete individual messages, conversation threads, channel content, direct-message history, group discussions, or entire communication spaces. Because the subject acts through an elevated or delegated role, the deletion may affect evidence belonging to several participants and may remove communications that the original author could not delete themselves.

This behavior may be used to conceal improper instructions, remove evidence of collusion, suppress complaints, protect another subject, or interfere with an active investigation. The administrative action may appear legitimate where the subject normally manages inappropriate content, retention, moderation, or workspace administration.

Investigators should assess whether the deletion was supported by an approved moderation, legal, records-management, or operational requirement. Relevant evidence includes the administrative identity used, the original message author, affected participants, deletion reason, approval records, platform audit logs, retention configuration, and the relationship between the deleting subject and those whose messages were removed.

The use of administrative privileges alone does not establish anti-forensic conduct. Classification should require evidence that the deletion was unauthorized or intended to remove evidence relevant to an insider event.

A subject deletes a channel, group, workspace, conversation, mailbox folder, discussion board, or other communication container to remove the messages and associated context held within it.

Deleting a communication container may remove or obscure a larger body of evidence than deleting individual messages. The affected records may include message content, participant lists, timestamps, thread relationships, attachments, reactions, membership changes, and links to other organizational material.

The subject may delete the container after communications associated with an infringement have concluded, after participants have left the group, or after the subject becomes aware that the communication environment may be reviewed. They may also rename, archive, or move the container before deletion to make it more difficult to identify.

Investigators should establish who created, owned, administered, archived, and deleted the container; when the deletion occurred; which participants and messages were affected; and whether the activity followed an alert, complaint, investigation, or other relevant event. Platform audit records, retention systems, backups, legal holds, exports, and participant devices may allow the deleted content or surrounding metadata to be reconstructed.