Evaluating Safeguards Effectiveness Against the Violent Insider

The threat posed by violent insiders presents a major challenge to safeguards managers. These insiders, in addition to their ability to exploit their special authorities, access, and knowledge of facility operations and safeguards, could use violence to defeat safeguards components and personnel. In protecting against theft of special nuclear material, facilities have emphasized the use of perimeter protection and physical barriers to protect against attacks by an outsider adversary group. Recently, emphasis has begun to shift toward the implementation of hardware and procedural measures to protect against nonviolent insiders. Approaches are also needed to help assess the effectiveness of protection against those insiders who are willing to use violence. In this paper we describe an approach we're developing for dealing with violent insiders. We begin by categorizing insiders according to whether they are active or passive, rational or irrational, and whether they are willing to use force against safeguards components or coworkers. We define characteristics of each category, and describe the extent to which each category is adequately modelled by existing evaluation tools. We also discuss several modelling issues posed by active insiders, including: entry of contraband; reluctance to use violence; neutralization of insiders; and the ability to switch modes of attack between force, stealth, and deceit.