OBAMA ADMINISTRATION AIMS TO CREATE ‘INSIDER THREAT’ JOB SPECIALTY TO PLUG LEAKS
By Aliya Sternstein
NextGov.com
Dec. 22, 2014
A New Year’s goal of the federal office responsible for averting employee leaks is to make a career out of catching so-called insider threats.
It is a delicate task to simultaneously guard hard-working federal personnel and expose the bad apples. And it takes different talents than those one would find in a counterintelligence analyst, human resources professional or information security professional. The insider threat discipline melds all those disciplines.
“It’s a privilege to work in that program. And the only reason that you are there is to help protect your colleagues, not to out them. So, we’ve got to professionalize that workforce of people who do this for a living,” said Patricia Larsen, co-director of the National Insider Threat Task Force. “They have to view themselves as part of a community.”
Larsen was speaking at a forum hosted by Nextgov earlier this month.
Background investigators these people are not. Although, that profession now has somewhat of a reputation problem, too.
The Office of Personnel Management on Thursday began notifying more than 48,000 employees their personal information may have been exposed following a possible cyber intrusion at KeyPoint Government Solutions, which conducts background checks on personnel applying for security clearances. Over the summer, USIS, once the government’s largest provider of employee investigator, disclosed a data breach, potentially compromising information on 25,000 workers.
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