Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman, was arrested Thursday on federal charges of unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information. Authorities say he’s responsible for releasing potentially hundreds of highly classified documents, first within a small online video gaming group on the Discord platform, then more broadly across social media. He was not required to enter a plea when he appeared in court Friday.
Corporate America has better insider threat programs than the Defense Department does.
The allegations against the suspect highlight a dangerous and embarrassing disparity: Corporate America has better insider threat programs than the Defense Department does. Our vulnerability to such threats is a problem that the Pentagon and Congress must address now.
It was in 2010 that Chelsea Manning, then a 23-year-old Army intelligence analyst, stole and shared nearly 750,000 classified and sensitive documents leading to their dissemination by Wikileaks. In the aftermath of that intelligence disaster, the Pentagon rethought its cybersecurity protocols to mitigate the chances of such a massive leak happening again.
At the time of that hemorrhage of secrets, the Defense Department admitted that only 60% of its computer systems were equipped with software capable of “monitoring unusual data access or usage.” Cybersecurity expert Hemu Nigam remarked then, “Only 60%? That’s ridiculous. You would never hear a corporation saying they have anything less than 90% cybersecurity.”
Then in May 2013, National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked over a million classified documents to the media. Snowden, who is wanted by the federal government, has taken refuge in Russia to avoid extradition and prosecution. The Defense Department said changes were made then, too. But those changes were clearly not enough.
The Defense Department appears to lack the collective will or the capacity to do more…
Read the full article here