MITRE and DTEX Form Public-Private Partnership to Elevate Insider Risk Awareness & Advance Human-Informed Cyber Defense Strategies

In response to workplace changes from the global pandemic, employers are searching for ways to protect a distributed and increasingly remote workforce. Today’s workforce risk is compounded by an increase in employee stress and the continued rise of nation-state and sophisticated adversaries aggressively targeting trusted insiders. The result is an urgent requirement to address the growth of insider risk within Five Eyes Critical Infrastructure entities.

To meet this need, we are pleased to announce the formation of a public-private partnership with The MITRE Corporation, a non-profit research and development organization that works in the public interest. Together with MITRE, we will conduct collaborative research to help both industry and government elevate their insider threat programs using advances in technology and human behavioral science. This collaborative approach will deliver community-oriented, data-driven approaches to solve the global challenges to safety and security that organizations face every day.

“The risks 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, Outreach and Chief Legal Officer.

Our collaboration, and decision to change the game began, in early 2020, at the outset of the pandemic, as members of the Australian Cyber Collaboration Centre (A3C). Sponsored by the A3C, we conducted a data-driven study of the modern insider threat landscape. Our researchers explored how remote workers search, collect, and exfiltrate real data on a live corporate network, and how their behavior was affected by their intention (malicious vs. benign) and technical expertise (expertise agnostic vs. advanced technical expertise). The study, titled “Remote-Worker Cyber Indicators of Malicious Insider Threat,” identified and differentiated behavioral characteristics of malicious users from benign. The results reveal multiple, never-before seen, data-driven cyber indicators of real-life malicious remote-workers.

“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 ‘Making the world a safer place’ corporate mission. We needed to raise the bar.”

The Honourable Steven Marshall MP, Premier of South Australia, stated, “the threat from inside our Critical Infrastructure is very real, and any compromise to the security of these entities will have a damaging and lasting impact to a nation’s economy and the safety of its citizens. We are proud to host MITRE’s collaboration with DTEX through the A3C in South Australia, and I applaud their commitment to solving this urgent requirement in the interests of national security.”

In March 2021, the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) released new Guidelines for mitigating Insider Threats which state, “Among other activities, foreign threat actors are collecting large sets of public and non-public data about these organizations and their workforces at an unprecedented level … Their strengths are identifying our weaknesses, and our threats are their opportunities. Given this threat landscape, it is imperative that critical infrastructure entities prioritize and dedicate resources to pre-empt and/or mitigate insider threats.”

Just weeks after the NCSC’s new guidelines, we completed our joint study with MITRE. And today, that study is the foundation for MITRE Inside-R Protect program, a new specialized service—underpinned by two decades of multi-disciplinary research and operational expertise—that embraces human behavioral sciences to advance next-generation cyber risk initiatives.

Delivered via our new partnership, MITRE Inside-R Protect will offer Five Eyes Critical Infrastructure entities the following services:

• Expert review of existing or planned Insider Risk Programs.
• An independent data-driven Insider Risk Assessment and support for self-assessments.
• Continuous knowledge transfer and closed-door briefings on MITRE insider risk research and actual insider threat cases.

To learn more about our partnership with MITRE and Inside-R Protect, visit https://www.dtexsystems.com/platform/inside-r-protect/.

Later this month, on February 24, 2022 at 1 pm ET, Julie Bowen, SVP of Operations, Outreach and Chief Legal Officer of The MITRE Corporation alongside Chris Folk, MITRE’s Director of Cyber Partnerships and Policy, will host a live briefing titled: For the Greater Good ~ How Global Partnerships Address Emerging Human-Centric Risks and Improve Cyber Resiliency. The exclusive briefing offers an overview of Inside-R Protect in the context of MITRE’s mission to make cyberspace safer for all. Attendees will learn more about the opportunities available to government and private entities to participate in applied collaborative research that leads to data-driven approaches, open-source frameworks, and other tools to address the challenges posed by insider risk. Those interested in attending should visit www2.dtexsystems.com/for-the-greater-good to request an invitation.

The post MITRE and DTEX Form Public-Private Partnership to Elevate Insider Risk Awareness & Advance Human-Informed Cyber Defense Strategies appeared first on DTEX Systems Inc.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from DTEX Systems Inc authored by Mohan Koo. Read the original post at: https://www.dtexsystems.com/blog/mitre-and-dtex-form-public-private-partnership-to-elevate-insider-risk-awareness-advance-human-informed-cyber-defense-strategies/