Towards a Theory of Insider Threat Assessment

Insider attacks are a well-known problem acknowledged as a threat as early as 1980s. The threat is attributed to legitimate users who abuse their privileges, and given their familiarity and proximity to the computational environment, can easily cause significant damage or losses. Due to the lack of tools and techniques, security analysts do not correctly perceive the threat, and hence consider the attacks as unpreventable. In this paper, we present a theory of insider threat assessment. First, we describe a modeling methodology which captures several aspects of insider threat, and subsequently, show threat assessment methodologies to reveal possible attack strategies of an insider.