US chems and others vulnerable to insider threat

09 October 2007 23:14  [Source: ICIS news]

(adds dropped words "standing in for" in paragraph 3)

 

WASHINGTON (ICIS news)--US chemical manufacturers and other critical industries are not adequately prepared to cope with the growing potential for insider terrorist threats, a presidential advisory panel said on Tuesday.

 

The National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC) said in a preliminary report that the chemicals industry and 16 other business sectors that make up US critical infrastructure “are immature in dealing with the insider threat”.

 

Peter Allor, standing in for the lead officer of the council’s working group on information sharing, said the group’s two-phase study found that the threat to the country’s critical infrastructure from insiders most likely would involve a disgruntled employee or economic espionage by foreign competitors.

 

Allor said that the insider threat from a company’s workforce would most commonly be from among long-term employees, especially those who have access to critical knowledge and systems and would be in a position to use that access to cause harm.

 

In addition, Allor said that the technology available to insiders who may pose a threat is growing faster than most companies can fashion counter-terrorism solutions.

 

For example, he said that small, mobile computing devices such as laptops and hand-held personal digital assistants (PDAs) in wide use among the US workforce are eroding traditional workplace boundaries that otherwise might impede insider attacks.

 

The globalization of chemicals production and other manufacturing also increases the potential for insider attacks, Allor said.

 

“Globalization expands the group of trusted insiders within a company and can also mean an increasing number of suppliers and vendors are included in that group,” he told the council.

 

He said the location of a company’s employees at operations or production sites around the world means that there are multinational obstacles for firms trying to deal with the insider threat.

 

For example, he said, there are multiple jurisdictional and cultural obstacles to such security procedures as finger-printing and background checks that might identify insider liabilities among a global company’s workforce.

 

The council, established by President George Bush in the immediate aftermath of the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the US, advises the Department of Homeland Security on threats to critical infrastructure.

 

The council expects to make recommendations on coping with insider threats in its January 2008 meeting.

By: Joe Kamalick
+1 713 525 2653

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