Insider Threats: A Worst Practices Guide to Preventing Leaks, Thefts, Attacks, and Sabotage
Matthew Bunn, Scott Sagan

May 15, 2017

High-security organizations around the world face devastating threats from insiders—trusted employees with access to sensitive information, facilities, and materials. From Edward Snowden to the Fort Hood shooter to the theft of nuclear materials, the threat from insiders is on the front page and at the top of the policy agenda. Insider Threats offers detailed case studies of insider disasters across a range of different types of institutions, from biological research laboratories, to nuclear power plants, to the U.S. Army. Matthew Bunn and Scott Sagan outline cognitive and organizational biases that lead organizations to downplay the insider threat, and they synthesize “worst practices” from these past mistakes, offering lessons that will be valuable for any organization with high security and a lot to lose.

Matthew Bunn’s research interests include nuclear theft and terrorism; nuclear proliferation and measures to control it; the future of nuclear energy and its fuel cycle; and innovation in energy technologies. Before coming to Harvard, Bunn served as an adviser to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, as a study director at the National Academy of Sciences, and as editor of Arms Control Today. He is the author or co-author of more than 20 books or major technical reports, and over a hundred articles in publications ranging from Science to The Washington Post.

Scott Sagan’s research interests include development of norms concerning the use of force; the management of hazardous technology; the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and South Asia. From 1984 to 1985, he served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. Sagan has also served as a consultant to the office of the Secretary of Defense and at the Sandia National Laboratories and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Sagan is co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn.

Insider Threats: A Worst Practices Guide to Preventing Leaks, Thefts, Attacks, and Sabotage

The Center for Global Security Research (CGSR) sponsored this seminar entitled "Insider Threats: A Worst Practices Guide to Preventing Leaks, Thefts, Attacks, and Sabotage" on May 15, 2017, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The seminar was presented by Matthew Bunn, Professor of Practice at Harvard Kennedy School and Scott Sagan, Professor of Political Science at Stanford University.

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