Biblio

This paper describes results of a study seeking to identify observable events related to insider sabotage. We collected information from actual insider threat cases, created chronological timelines of the incidents, identified key points in each timeline such as when attack planning began, measured the time between key events, and looked for specific observable events or patterns that insiders held in common that may indicate insider sabotage is imminent or likely. Such indicators could be used by security experts to potentially identify malicious activity at or before the time of attack. Our process included critical steps such as identifying the point of damage to the organization as well as any malicious events prior to zero hour that enabled the attack but did not immediately cause harm. We found that nearly 71% of the cases we studied had either no observable malicious action prior to attack, or had one that occurred less than one day prior to attack. Most of the events observed prior to attack were behavioral, not technical, especially those occurring earlier in the case timelines. Of the observed technical events prior to attack, nearly one third involved installation of software onto the victim organizations IT systems.

As system of systems (SoS) models become increasingly complex and interconnected a new approach is needed to capture the effects of humans within the SoS. Many real-life events have shown the detrimental outcomes of failing to account for humans in the loop. This research introduces a novel and cross-disciplinary methodology for modeling humans interacting with technologies to perform tasks within an SoS specifically within a layered physical security system use case. Metrics and formulations developed for this new way of looking at SoS termed sociotechnical SoS allow for the quantification of the interplay of effectiveness and efficiency seen in detection theory to measure the ability of a physical security system to detect and respond to threats. This methodology has been applied to a notional representation of a small military Forward Operating Base (FOB) as a proof-of-concept.