National Insider Threat Awareness Month: Proactive Security Starts Inside

Each September, the U.S. government recognizes National Insider Threat Awareness Month (NITAM) to raise awareness about insider threats and promote stronger defenses across public and private organizations. Led by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, the National Insider Threat Task Force, and the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, NITAM emphasizes early identification, rapid intervention, and effective mitigation of insider risks.

The 2025 theme, “Partnering for Progress,” underscores a growing truth: insider risk management is a collective responsibility. Security leaders must collaborate across teams (especially HR), industries, and ecosystems to address one of the most complex challenges in cybersecurity today. 

The insider threat landscape today

The insider threat landscape has shifted far beyond the stereotype of a disgruntled employee. Modern insider risks extend to nation-state activity, emerging technologies, and increasingly complex supply chains.

• Nation-state stealth: Investigations, including DTEX i³ research into DPRK IT worker schemes, show how adversaries infiltrate global enterprises by posing as trusted insiders. These campaigns are strategic, persistent, and designed to evade detection.
• AI-driven exposure: Generative AI and autonomous tools create new security blind spots. Shadow AI, unvetted AI agents, and misused large language models can introduce risks that operate at machine speed.
• Supply chain complexity: As organizations rely on distributed vendors, contractors, and open-source components, the definition of an “insider” extends far beyond employees. Third-party compromise — whether through fake developer accounts, credential abuse, or embedded backdoors — has become one of the fastest-growing insider risk vectors.

Today’s insiders are increasingly stealthy, distributed, and technology-augmented — making detection and prevention more challenging than ever.

Types of insider risks

Not every insider threat looks the same. To build effective insider risk management programs, leaders must recognize three primary categories:

• Malicious insiders: Individuals who intentionally exfiltrate, misuse, or sabotage sensitive data.
• Negligent and mistaken insiders: Well-meaning individuals whose mistakes — like misdirected emails or weak access practices — create vulnerabilities.
• Compromised insiders: Users whose credentials, devices, or identities are taken over by adversaries, or who are coerced into actions against their organization’s interests.

For more detail, see DTEX’s guide on the types of insider threats.

Key behavioral indicators of insider risks

Most insider incidents don’t happen without warning. They’re often preceded by observable behavioral patterns that, if identified, can shift organizations from response to prevention.

Top behavioral indicators include:

• Repeated policy violations or unusual access to data
• Excessive downloading, copying, or file transfers
• Attempts to bypass monitoring or disable controls
• Noticeable changes in behavior, performance, or attitude
• Disgruntlement, conflict with management, or financial stress
• Overly curious behavior outside job responsibilities
• Unusual ties to competitors or foreign entities

Recommendations for security leaders

Effective insider risk management requires a shift from static defenses to adaptive strategies:

• Partner for progress. Align HR, legal, and security teams to balance culture, compliance, and risk. HR can provide workforce insight to detect early behavioral risks, while legal can ensure policies meet regulatory standards and mitigate liability. Together, they drive proactive insider risk management to protect data, build resilience, and foster a trusted workforce.
• Build a security-first culture where employees understand the importance of protecting sensitive data and feel confident reporting concerns.
• Make Employee Assistance Programs part of the insider risk program. EAPs are a vital component of insider risk management because they address the human factors that often precede risky or harmful behavior. While technology can monitor actions, it’s the support structures that help employees before problems escalate.
• Use behavioral intelligence to provide context-rich visibility into how people interact with data, reducing false positives and alert fatigue.
• Expand monitoring to third parties and AI tools to ensure contractors, vendors, and autonomous systems are included in risk models.
• Implement AI governance with clear policies that define which tools can be used, how sensitive data is handled, and how outputs are validated — ensuring AI enhances productivity without introducing unmanaged insider risks.
• Deploy risk-adaptive data loss prevention that dynamically adjusts enforcement based on behavior, intent, and context — protecting sensitive data without slowing business.

The future is proactive security

The future of insider threat defense lies in proactive security — moving beyond reactive alerts to resilience built on visibility, context, and adaptive controls. Organizations must know not only what data moved, but also who touched it, how it was used, and why.

DTEX is advancing this vision with innovations that combine behavioral intelligence, risk-adaptive DLP, and AI governance into a unified approach. By providing clarity across modern data vectors — including AI — and enabling real-time, context-driven decisions, organizations can anticipate insider risks before they escalate.

National Insider Threat Awareness Month is a reminder: security starts inside. The organizations that thrive will be those that treat insider risk as a strategic imperative — pairing trust with visibility and building resilience that scales.

This National Insider Threat Awareness Month, don’t just raise awareness — raise readiness. Request a DTEX Threat Briefing to get an expert view into current insider risk trends, behavioral patterns we’re seeing across enterprises, and the research that can inform your policies and controls.