Games for Insider Threat Activity Recognition (GITAR)

Considerable investment has been made in defensive cyberwarfare to prevent enemies and potential enemies from penetrating DoD networks. Little investment has been made, however, in training DoD personnel to detect and thwart insider threats to these networks. There are a variety of technologies for digitally detecting activities on cyber workstations. However, these automatic defense systems must be augmented by managers who are prepared to act as a human line of defense and who are alert to markers of suspicious behaviors or attitudes of employees. Training managers to perform these tasks requires fostering cooperative and complex decision-making skills among management team members. We propose to design and evaluate an insider-threat detection and remediation training curriculum for the management team based on Games for Insider Threat Activity Recognition (GITAR) to augment insider threat awareness training workshops, such as those developed at CERT, AFRL and PNNL. For this effort we will leverage in-house technologies to rapidly design and prototype knowledge and behavioral models, serious game components, as well as adapt and demonstrate our collaboration product as an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS), as a classroom discussion and team-building tool, and as a leave-behind tool to sustain a community of practice.