System Dynamics Based Insider Threats Modeling

Abstract

Insider threat has been recognized as one of the most dangerous security threats and become a much more complex issue. Insider threat is resulted from the legitimate users abusing their privileges and cause tremendous damage or losses. Not always being friends, insiders can be main threats to the organization. Currently, there is no equivalent prevention solution for insider threat to an intrution prevention system or vulnerability scanner. From the survey of literature of insider threat studies, we conclude that the system dynamics (SD) is an effective tool to analyze the root causes of insider threat incidents and evaluate mitigation strategies from people, process, and technology perspectives. A generized case based SD model can be tailored and applied to analyze and evaluate specific insider threat incidents. We present a well known insider threat incident of Taiwan and tailor the generized case based SD model to analyze it. The simulation results indicate that the risk of insider threats can be reduced and the probability of detecting insider threats can be increased.