September is National Insider Threat Awareness Month (NITAM), an annual, month-long campaign spearheaded by the Office of the Undersecretary of War for Intelligence and Security (OUSW(I&S)) and the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) to educate government and industry about the risks posed by insider threats and the role of insider threat programs.
ARLIS conducts research to help OUSW(I&S), DCSA, and others in the IC community to model and mitigate insider risks. Accordingly, ARLIS subject matter experts have taken on high-visibility roles this month to help make NITAM a success.
Bill Stephens, Counterintelligence for Strategic Competition Mission Manager, participated in a one-hour panel along with Patricia Janssen, Director for Enterprise Planning and Capability Implementation (EP&CI) Directorate with the DoW CIO Cybersecurity office, and Dan Costa, Technical Manager at Carnegie Mellon University, at the 2025 DCSA and Department of War Insider Threat Management and Analysis Center (DITMAC) NITAM Conference on Aug. 18 and 19.
The panel discussed emerging tools that might advance mitigation for insider threat challenges in government, industry, and academia. The focus of the exchange centered on Information Technology tools being necessary, but insufficient without effectively integrating the IT tech with policy, process, and people.
Stephanie Jaros, Visiting Research Scientist, delivered a talk on “Protecting the Future: Insider Risk & Quantum Information Science” to the Cognitive Security Institute on Sept. 24. The talk focused on the opportunity security and social science researchers have to work with quantum scientists, cybersecurity professionals, and other stakeholders to protect new strategic tools and systems designed to enhance national defense capabilities.
These thought leadership roles come in addition to a number of ARLIS-specific lectures and shared resources intended to raise awareness of NITAM issues and ways to help ARLIS researchers and staff.
NITAM activities help us remember that the key to a secure and resilient organization is our ability to anticipate, adapt, and act before threats have a chance to disrupt our mission.