What do Jack Teixeira, Joshua Schulte, and Korbein Schultz have in common?
All three worked for the federal government in some capacity, and all three used their insider access for nefarious purposes, got caught and were arrested. Teixeira, while with the Air National Guard, shared classified documents on social media, while Schultz, a member of the Army, planned to disclose national defense information. Schulte’s insider threat behavior was even more heinous; the former CIA officer was recently sentenced to 40 years in prison for “crimes of espionage, computer hacking, contempt of Court, making false statements to the FBI, and child pornography.”
These are a few high-profile insider risk incidents that have made national news, but there are dozens of other insider threats happening within federal government, both innocent mistakes and maliciously intended, that go undetected by security, risk and HR teams. A 2023 report by DTEX, for example, found that 12% of employees took sensitive intellectual property with them when they left the company. The growing use of unsanctioned applications, or shadow IT, is exacerbating the issue, creating visibility blind spots that make…
