Matthew Bunn: Insider Threats & the Challenge to High-Security Organizations

This is a presentation from the Union of Concerned Scientists' webinar series on nuclear weapons and global security. For a complete list of past webinars (and links to the videos), please see: http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-weapons/summer-symposium/security-webinars-lectures.html

Abstract:
High-security organizations around the world face devastating threats from insiders—trusted employees with access to sensitive information, facilities, and materials. From Edward Snowden to the Fort Hood shooter to the theft of nuclear materials, the threat from insiders is on the front page and at the top of the policy agenda. The talk will outline key insights from the new book Insider Threats (https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/insider-threats), which was co-edited with Scott Sagan of Stanford University. The book offers detailed case studies of insider disasters across a range of different types of institutions, from biological research laboratories, to nuclear power plants, to the US Army. It also includes an unprecedented analysis of terrorist thinking about using insiders to get fissile material or sabotage nuclear facilities. The talk will discuss cognitive and organizational biases that lead organizations to downplay the insider threat, and “worst practices” from these past mistakes, offering lessons that will be valuable for any organization with high security and a lot to lose.

Bio:
Matthew Bunn is Professor of Practice, and Co-Principal Investigator of the Project on Managing the Atom, in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. His research interests include nuclear theft and terrorism, nuclear proliferation and measures to control it, the future of nuclear energy and its fuel cycle, and policies to promote innovation in energy technologies.

Before joining the Kennedy School in January 1997, Bunn served for three years as an adviser to the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and was at the National Academy of Sciences, where he directed the two-volume study Management and Disposition of Excess Weapons Plutonium. He is the winner of the American Physical Society's Joseph A. Burton Forum Award and the Federation of American Scientists' Hans Bethe Award, and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He holds a doctorate in technology, management, and policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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