Managing the Insider Threat: No Dark Corners

Managing the Insider Threat: No Dark Corners. By Nick Catrantzos, CPP. CRC Press. Available from ASIS, www.asisonline.org/ASIS-Store, item #2038; 364 pages; $70 (ASIS member), $77 (nonmember).

Daily news often brings tragic reports of attacks on soldiers, diplomats, and others that result from betrayals of trust. A corporate equivalent would be the activities of “insiders” when they adversely affect organizations. These cases highlight the importance of addressing insider threats and developing strategies to mitigate their ability to cause damage. The ways in which this has been done to date are insufficient, but this book offers a new approach.

Managing the Insider Threat applies social science research to the problem of insider threats, identifying mechanisms to reduce the “dark corners” that allow insiders to engage in damaging actions and providing guidance on how to implement mitigating strategies. Each chapter of this book deals with an important facet of the challenges in identifying and dealing with the insider threat to an organization, and guides readers through them with scenarios, exercises, and references. In the pro­cess, the author discusses a range of actions from improving background investigations to effectively monitoring the workplace to disrupting adversarial acts.

Throughout the work, Nick Catrantzos brings his experience in government and the private sector to bear in innovative and effective ways. Catrantzos focuses on critical issues such as why infiltrators are more dangerous than ordinary disgruntled employees, what deception is all about and how it relates to insider threats, and how senior organizational officials have more tools available to them than they realize to deal with such situations.