Michael Vickers, then-defense undersecretary for intelligence at the Defense Department, said in an April 2015 report that DoD has initiated efforts to detect potential insider threats through pilots and concept demonstrations, according to the Federation of American Scientists.Steven Aftergood wrote Jan. 7 on the FAS blog that Vickers’ report to Congress said the Pentagon used such demonstrations to perform continuous evaluation on approximately 100,000 contractor, civilian and military staff.
FAS obtained the report from DoD through the Freedom of Information Act.
According to Aftergood, DoD reduced the number of security clearance holders by 800,000 from fiscal year 2013 through the third quarter of fiscal year 2015 as part of the department’s efforts to address insider threats.
A quarterly report on the insider threat program shows that government agencies have either postponed or missed certain program milestones as of the fourth quarter of FY 2015.
These include key milestones that fall under various work plans such as improvement of enterprise management of information technology systems and resources, development of insider threat initiatives and implementation of federal investigative standards.
