The Design and Implementation of an Insider Threat Maturity Model

Large organizations face the practical challenge of assessing then communicating the status of their insider threat program to internal stakeholders and external regulators. This task is complicated by the absence of a definitive standard against which to perform such an assessment. Several best practice documents exist, but because those documents are authored by different institutions the content is uneven and often duplicative. The objective of this article is to describe the design and implementation of an insider threat maturity model that attempts to address these issues. Design science was selected as the theoretical framework because the goal was to create an artifact that is useful in a practical setting. In accordance with design science, both the process of designing the model and the experience of using the model in a real-world environment are detailed. The model is created by synthesizing 568 recommendations from 8 separate best practice documents published between 2013 and 2023. Based on feedback from stakeholders, both the model and a corresponding data visualization have been found to be effective tools when deployed within a large multinational investment bank.