Operational

The West Point Insider Threat program provides support to the Army and Department of Defense that supports the mission of both to reduce risk likelihood, prevent and protect against insider threat activity, and mitigate effects of action that does manifest. Some notable projects follow below.

An Extremist Among Us. In conjunction with the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, the Program funded a leader challenge developed by USMA’s Center for Junior Officers. This Leader Challenge presents a scenario where an Insider Threat Program Manager navigates an investigation into a commissioned officer who is displaying extremist behavior and who may be a terrorist “in the making.”


Army Prioritized Protection List (APPL). Every other year, the Army develops the APPL to assist in the allocation of protection resources. The Program validated the Army’s APPL working group business rules, refined the current model to include quantitative development of criteria weights, streamline the data collection and input processes, automate sensitivity analysis, and develop safeguards against actors attempting to “game the results” by making self-serving changes.

Notably, collaboration with a civilian partner (Decision Lens) enabled the integration of a multi-criteria decision making model (Analytic Hierarchy Process) that uses the aggregation of pairwise comparisons to inform the model’s weights in a scientifically viable way, replacing methodology that could not be analytically validated.


(Ongoing) Oath to the Constitution. The Program is collaborating with the Army Cyber Institute, City University of New York (Queens), and D3 Systems to analyze focus group data from multiple Army installations to gain insight into the understanding Soldiers at different rank levels have toward their responsibility to the Oath to the Constitution. The analysis of these focus groups will inform the necessity for a more detailed study and/or inform training for this basic civic responsibility.