WORKPLACE VIOLENCE NEWS (continued) Identifying, Thwarting Insider Threats Before They Do Damage
Researchers argue that one way to identify and predict potential insider threats even before these individuals begin to do damage like stealing and leaking sensitive information, is by using Big Data to monitor changes in behavior patterns. Researchers at PARC, for example, found that individuals who exhibit sudden decrease in participation in group activity, whether in a game likeWorld of Warcraft or corporate e-mail communications, are likely to withdraw from the organization. A withdrawal represents dissatisfaction with the organization, a common trait of individuals who are likely to engage in insider security breaches.
The Defense Department (DOD) is exploring methods to identify potential violations by insiders before they occur. Mark Nehmer, associated deputy director of cybersecurity and counterintelligence for DOD, said that an insider threat signal could be a combination of multiple changes in an individual‘s profile. ―Think of statistics and human behavior and think about correlating past and future behavior, that‘s the future of insider threat, I believe,‖ he said.
Once intelligence officials are able to monitor staff behavior patterns, they must then understand which signals predict insider threats. Oliver Brdiczka, a researcher at PARC, is using online environments like multiplayer online game,World of Warcraft, and corporate e-mail systems to understand the traits of individuals likely to commit security breaches. In theWorld of Warcraft sample, Brdiczka was able to predict which players would quit the game‘s organized teams in six months with an accuracy rate of 89 percent. In the corporate e-mail system sample, Brdiczka achieved 60 percent accuracy in predicting which employee would likely quit the organization.
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Additional reading: ―Proactive Insider Threat Detection through Graph Learning and Psychological Context‖ (Palo Alto Research Center [PARC], Palo Alto, California, no date); and Akshay Patil et al., ―Modeling Attrition in Organizations From Email Communication‖ (Palo Alto Research Center [PARC], Palo Alto, California, no date)
Caught on Campus
In many pictures of her online, Kayla Bourque looks like a typical college student: there are selfies of her on a coastal holiday, or smirking mischievously after an experiment in hair colour. But in 2012, Bourque, then a criminology student at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, told a classmate that she fantasized about killing a homeless person and that she was studying forensics so that she could get away with it. She also talked about killing her family pets and neighbourhood cats.
The classmate told a teaching assistant what Bourque had said, and the department chair called campus security. This triggered a formal process called a threat assessment, in which security, university administrators and outside consultants gathered evidence and evaluated Bourque‘s recent behaviour. They took the allegation seriously, says Stephen Hart, a forensic psychologist at Simon Fraser who advised on the case. ―Often something like this is a cry for help,‖ he says. But her actions on several occasions suggested that she might pose a threat to other students, so simply referring her to the university‘s outpatient mental-health services would not suffice. The team notified the local police, and told Bourque that she would not be able to return to university without a thorough psychological evaluation.
Then, while university employees were packing up her dorm room, they found what has been described in court documents as a ‗kill kit‘: a bag containing a kitchen knife, a razor blade, latex gloves, a syringe and plastic ties — the kind used to restrain people. ―They realized that this wasn‘t just a call for help,‖ says Hart. The discovery led to a search warrant for her computer, on which police found violent pornography, disturbing artwork and more selfies, including one of her standing naked next to her disembowelled dog, Molly.
Bourque spent nine months in custody in 2012 for killing Molly, as well as her cat Snowflake, and for possession of a weapon. When she was released it was with an impressive list of probationary conditions, including not using the Internet unsupervised, informing anyone she interacts with about her crimes, never owning a pet, and staying away from Simon Fraser. As horrifying as the case is, Hart sees it as a major triumph for the growing field of threat assessment.
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