Geopolitical competition, online radicalisation, and organisational culture as vectors of the evolving insider threat

Abstract Contemporary geopolitical competition, online radicalisation, and macroeconomic coercion have expanded insider threat typologies beyond the reach of detection-centred security models. This article is an integrative conceptual perspective: its contribution is theoretical rather than empirical. Drawing on counterintelligence studies, behavioural threat assessment, situational crime prevention, and organisational behaviour, it develops a causal-mechanism typology distinguishing four emergent vectors (state-sponsored infiltration, economically coerced insiders, violence-fixated employees, and identity-fabricated operatives termed manufactured insiders) and advances an integrated mitigation framework. The framework combines a deter-and-disrupt model, addressing opportunity structures through proactive intelligence, proportionate monitoring, continuous risk assessment, and security mindedness, with a caring security culture model, addressing motivational precipitators through psychological safety, perceived organisational support, and organisational justice. Following Wortley’s extension of situational crime prevention, the two models are positioned not as alternatives but as complementary stages of a single criminological architecture. The analytical claim is that the integrated framework accommodates precisely those cases, namely the manufactured insider and the violence-fixated actor, at which either model alone reaches its explanatory boundary. The framework is specified through testable propositions and accompanied by implementation and measurement indicators to support empirical evaluation.