Vulnerability Assessment Team (VAT)

The Insider Threat and Disgruntled Nuclear Workers

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Disgruntled nuclear workers represent potentially serious safety, security, espionage, and proliferation hazards. Much attention has been focused on so-called “disgruntled” Russian nuclear workers, but American nuclear workers are probably more likely to be disgruntled and may actually represent a greater risk. Two of the best ways to minimize disgruntlement is to have effective employee complaint resolution processes, and to protect whistleblowers. Few U.S. nuclear facilities appear to do these things.

Additional Information

Selected VAT publications on human factors in security (including the insider threat):

RG Johnston, “Under-Utilized Methods for Mitigating the Insider Threat”, Talk for the 58th Annual ASIS Meeting, Philadelphia, PA, September 10-13, 2012 [1.6MB].
EG Bitzer, PY Chen, and RG Johnston, “Security in Organizations: Expanding the Frontiers of Industrial-Organizational Psychology”, International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology 24, 131-150 (2009).
EG Bitzer, “An Exploratory Investigation of Organizational Security Climate in a Highly Regulated Environment”, Ph.D. Thesis, Colorado State University (2008).
EG Bitzer and A Hoffman, "Psychology in the Study of Physical Security", J Physical Security 2, 1-18 (2007).
EG Bitzer, “Strategies for Cutting Turnover”, Security Management 50, 88-94 (2006).
EG Bitzer and RG Johnston, “Turnkey Turnaround Solutions: Exploiting the Powerful Tools of I/O Psychology”, Los Alamos National Laboratory Report LAUR-05-1130, (2005), [ 47KB].
RG Johnston, JS Warner, ARE Garcia, et al., "Nuclear Safeguards and Security: We Can Do Better", Paper 1009, Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Environmental Remediation and Radioactive Waste Management, September 4-8, 2005, Glasgow, Scotland.
RG Johnston, “Adversarial Safety Analysis: Borrowing the Methods of Security Vulnerability Assessments”, Journal of Safety Research 35, 245-248 (2004).
EG Bitzer and RG Johnston, "A Taxonomy for Security Assignments", J Security Administration 26, 1-11 (2003).), [112KB].

For copies of the VAT papers and presentations on a wide variety of physical security issues (tags, seals, product counterfeiting, vulnerability assessments, RFIDs, GPS, nuclear safeguards) contact Roger G. Johnston.

Last Modified: Thu, December 6, 2012 2:53 PM