Software Engineering Institute

The threat of malicious actions by trusted insiders is a difficult issue to predict and combat. This paper presents an agent-based model that simulates a way in which social interventions can curb or eliminate the occurrence of malicious insider attacks, or “insider threats,” within an organization. There are several precursors to an individual taking malicious action against an organization. One such factor, social isolation from one’s peers, may lend itself to proactive remediation techniques. Here we attempt to model the occurrence of malicious insider attacks for which social isolation is a precursor, then demonstrate the effects of social interventions on the emergence of such behavior.