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Insider threats are a serious and evolving risk to U.S. critical infrastructure, and foreign adversaries are increasingly targeting organizations and the people who work in them. But the official sources cited here do not establish a quantified national surge across all critical-infrastructure sectors. The clearest evidence is about how trusted access and human vulnerabilities can be exploited—and how organizations can reduce that risk.
What counts as critical infrastructure—and an insider threat?
CISA identifies 16 U.S. critical-infrastructure sectors. They form an interconnected ecosystem in which disruption can have debilitating consequences for national security, the economy, public health, or safety. CISA’s sector overview also provides tabletop exercise packages, including sector-specific scenarios, for organizations that want to practice responding to incidents.
An insider threat is not limited to a current employee deliberately stealing data. CISA’s July 2024 fact sheet includes malicious, complacent, and unintentional acts that harm an organization’s data, personnel, facilities, or resources. The person may be a current or former employee, contractor, or another trusted individual with authorized access—or with institutional knowledge that makes that access useful.
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CISA’s Insider Threat Mitigation Guide warns that critical-infrastructure assets, systems, and networks of any size or function can be harmed by an insider or someone with institutional knowledge and current or prior authorized access. The risk therefore includes both misuse of legitimate privileges and mistakes or omissions that create an opening for harm.
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Does the evidence show a national surge?
Not as a quantified, across-the-board trend. CISA’s and the National Counterintelligence and Security Center’s guidance describes an evolving threat and increasing adversary attention to critical infrastructure and other private-sector and academic organizations. Those statements establish concern and direction, but the cited official material does not provide a single national time series showing that insider incidents are rising across every U.S. critical-infrastructure sector.
Some figures repeated in CISA’s July 2024 fact sheet offer context about insider risk and workplace harm, but they come from different publishers, years, and populations. They are not a measure of CNI incidents or a common trend line.
| Figure reproduced by CISA | Original publisher and year | What it does—and does not—show |
|---|---|---|
| $16.2 million average cost of an insider-risk incident | Ponemon Institute, 2023 | A third-party average cost figure; CISA reproduces it. It is not a sector-by-sector estimate of U.S. critical-infrastructure losses or a measure of incident frequency. |
| 90% of cybersecurity professionals believed their organizations were vulnerable to insider threats | Crowd Research Partners, 2018 | A reported belief among cybersecurity professionals, not a finding that 90% of organizations experienced an incident. |
| 25% of workplace violence was reported as unreported | National Safety Council, 2022 | A workplace-violence reporting figure, not an estimate of insider cyber incidents or critical-infrastructure attacks. |
| $121 billion estimated annual U.S. cost of workplace violence | AlertFind, 2018 | A historical estimate reproduced by CISA, not a current annual cost or an insider-threat loss estimate for CNI. |
The FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report identifies the 16 critical-infrastructure sectors and records more than 1,400 ransomware complaints from organizations outside critical sectors. That figure describes complaints from non-critical-sector organizations; it is not an insider-threat statistic and cannot prove a surge in attacks on CNI.
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How do attackers exploit human factors?
Human factors matter because trusted people already have some combination of access, knowledge, relationships, and credibility. An adversary may seek to exploit those conditions rather than break through every technical safeguard directly. The NCSC’s 2024 guidance says foreign adversaries are targeting a broader range of private-sector and academic organizations, including U.S. critical infrastructure, and exploiting vulnerable people in workforces.
- Legitimate credentials and privileges: An authorized account or physical credential can make harmful activity look routine. Excessive access increases what a compromised, coerced, or malicious person can reach.
- Institutional knowledge: Familiarity with systems, procedures, schedules, or security practices can help someone identify weak points or act in ways that are harder to notice.
- Trusted relationships: Contractor relationships and ordinary workplace interactions can provide avenues for influence, coercion, or exploitation.
- Concerning or anomalous behavior: A change in conduct or an unusual action may warrant attention, but a single observation does not establish malicious intent. NCSC emphasizes identifying behavior early, before significant damage occurs.
- Reporting gaps: People may not know where to report a concern, may fear repercussions, or may assume someone else will act. Without a usable, confidential pathway, relevant information can remain disconnected.
- Disconnected personnel and security processes: Human resources may hold personnel information and identify patterns, behavior, or trends relevant to risk. If HR, managers, and security do not coordinate through lawful, privacy-aware processes, warning signs or support needs may be missed.
CISA’s HR guidance, revised July 29, 2024, calls the insider a “dynamic, ever-evolving threat” to an organization’s personnel and critical information. The practical implication is that insider risk is a people-and-systems issue: technical controls alone cannot supply context, while personnel processes without access controls and security telemetry may not limit the opportunity for harm.
What should an effective insider-risk program include?
CISA’s framework organizes the work into defining the threat, detecting and identifying it, assessing it, and managing it. Its July 2024 fact sheet recommends leadership support, identifying critical physical and intellectual assets, confidential reporting, training and awareness, and a standardized response process maintained by a multidisciplinary Threat Management Team.
- Set leadership authority and scope. Establish who can convene the response team, assess a concern, restrict access, and make escalation decisions. Include the functions needed to evaluate both people and systems.
- Identify critical assets and access paths. Map the physical and intellectual assets whose loss or disruption could cause serious harm, then determine which roles, accounts, facilities, and contractors can reach them.
- Limit and monitor access. Give people only the access needed for their work, review it as roles change, and monitor for improper actions. Monitoring should have clear purposes and appropriate privacy safeguards.
- Make reporting safe and usable. Provide a confidential way for employees and contractors to raise concerns, and make clear how reports are assessed and handled.
- Train people to recognize and report concerns. Explain relevant threat behaviors, reporting routes, and the organization’s response process without encouraging unsupported accusations or treating a single behavior as proof.
- Assess concerns through a multidisciplinary team. Coordinate security, HR, management, and other relevant functions so that available information is evaluated consistently and lawfully.
- Use a repeatable response plan. Define how the organization will triage a concern, protect people and critical assets, manage access, document decisions, and escalate when appropriate. Practice the plan with tabletop exercises.
CISA’s Insider Risk Mitigation Program Evaluation (IRMPE), developed with Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, is a resource for gauging organizational readiness for a potential insider-threat incident. CISA’s Insider Threat Mitigation Guide provides a fuller framework, while its tabletop exercise packages help organizations rehearse response scenarios, including those tailored to sectors.
How should organizations judge insider-risk tools and services?
Technology can support detection and access management, but a product does not replace clear authority, usable reporting, or coordinated assessment. When comparing a platform or service, assess whether it covers both physical and cyber risks, and whether it fits the organization’s operational environment.
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- Coverage of physical and cyber risks, including relevant industrial-control-system needs.
- Detection of anomalous behavior and quality of the context provided to investigators.
- Least-privilege and privileged-access controls.
- Integration between HR and security processes, with privacy and civil-liberties safeguards.
- Ease of using confidential reporting pathways.
- Clear response authority, response timing, auditability, and total operating cost.
These criteria help distinguish a tool that generates alerts from a program that can evaluate concerns and act appropriately. Fit depends on the organization’s assets, workforce, sector, and existing controls.
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