Systematic analysis of security advice on the topic of insider threats

Abstract

Insider threats are an important and enduring security challenge. As a consequence, a number of organizations such as government agencies, research institutions, trade groups, and other parties have published documents containing advice on the topic of insider threats. Here, we provide an evaluation of such advice documents. We employ the relatively new SAcoding (security advice coding) methodology to perform a systematic analysis. This approach enables us both to assess the advice documents and to provide feedback on the use of SAcoding for a novel category (advice intended specifically for organizations), and for a novel topic (advice on the topic of insider threats). We find that 62.5% of 424 advice items extracted from six source documents are actionable, but the per-document proportion of actionable advice ranges substantially from 85.4% to just 35.1%. This finding suggests that organizations may incur opportunity costs by engaging with documents that offer little actionable advice. We also find that organizations may struggle to apply the published guidance, due to the high quantity of advice and the high portion of advice that requires specialist expertise. We use these and other findings to deliver a practical framework that provides guidance for the authors of advice documents, and for organizations seeking advice on the topic of insider threats. Additionally, we provide feedback on various aspects of the SAcoding method.