On February 1, McLean, VA-based MITRE and Saratoga, CA-based DTEX Systems announced a partnership to elevate insider risk awareness and human-informed cyber defense strategies through behavioral-based research and the launch of the MITRE Inside-R Protect program.
Today’s employees work within a high-paced, technology-enabled world where they are asked to do more and do so faster than ever before. This workforce requirement, coupled with the rise in the threat of nation-state adversaries aggressively targeting trusted insiders, is driving a call to action within Five Eyes critical infrastructure organizations to manage insider risk more effectively while also protecting increasingly distributed and hybrid workforces.
“The risk to the critical infrastructure entities of the Five Eyes from insider threats is very real, and any compromise to the security of these entities will have a damaging and lasting impact to these nations’ economies and the safety of their citizens,” said Julie Bowen, MITRE’s senior vice president of operations and outreach and chief legal officer.
Under a non-exclusive licensing agreement, MITRE and DTEX will conduct collaborative research and deliver MITRE Inside-R Protect as a set of data-driven, community-oriented service offerings to help industry and government elevate their insider risk programs using behavioral sciences.
MITRE Inside-R Protect will offer Five Eyes critical infrastructure organizations the following service offerings:
- Expert review of existing or planned insider risk programs,
- An independent, data-driven, insider risk assessment and support for self-assessments, and
- Continuous knowledge transfer and closed-door briefings on MITRE insider threat research and actual insider threat cases.
“MITRE recognizes three fundamental challenges in insider threat,” said Deanna Caputo, MITRE’s capability lead for insider threat. “First, there is a lack of data-driven, behavior-based, and rigorous scientific evidence to understand these escalating risks. Second, there is an over-reliance on frameworks and security controls focused on addressing external cyber threats. And third, insights are being made from a small pool of case studies that lack sufficient detail. We feel that these challenges must be addressed immediately as a component of our mission to solve problems for a safer world. We needed to raise the bar.”
“Insider threats, whether the result of a malicious insider, a compromised user, or a negligent employee, represent one of the greatest risks to an organization’s brand, intellectual property, workforce, and supply chain,” said Mohan Koo, CTO and co-founder, DTEX Systems. “Our research with MITRE found new human behavioral indicators and sequences that represent markers that appear in nearly every insider threat event. These indicators, in the hands of MITRE’s experts and scientists, and layered into our DTEX InTERCEPT platform, offer Five Eyes critical infrastructure entities an opportunity to identify and mitigate insider-born risks before data exfiltration, sabotage, and fraudulent behaviors result in permanent operational damage.”
Source: MITRE
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