The Insider Secrets - Doing Business With The Government

We will not post comments that we consider abusive or off-topic. What is your e-mail address? My e-mail address is: Do you have a password? I don't have a password.

I have a password Forgot your password? Trending Dive into our Contract Award database In an exclusive for WT Insider members, we are collecting all of the contract awards we cover into a database that you can sort by contractor, agency, value and other parameters.

It's been reported that the tests are happening just east of a village called Worsted Lodge, close to Sawston, in Cambridgeshire, but this is unconfirmed. Daniel Buchmueller, who cofounded Amazon's Prime Air business and leads Amazon's drone development operations in the UK, revealed last month that Amazon's largest outdoor drone testing site is somewhere in the region.

In the United States, in Austria, and in Israel," he said.

But we also have outdoor testing facilities. In fact, our largest outdoor facility is right here in the UK. US regulations only allow for line-of-sight operations so Amazon is not able to test its drones in its home country. Liam Maxwell, the government's chief technology officer, said the UK is "open" and "more progressive" than other countries when it comes to drone testing at an Amazon conference last month.

In , for example, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was killed by two of her own Sikh bodyguards , one of them a trusted favorite. One of the most striking elements of the cases in our study is how organizations ignore even the most obvious and alarming red flags. Army biodefense researcher Bruce Ivins, for example, complained about his increasingly dangerous paranoia in an email to a colleague. Ivins even speculated about being mentioned in newspaper reports with the headline: No one reported, or acted on, that or any of his many other signals that something was amiss.

Instead, his coworkers wrote them off as harmless eccentricity. Even when an employee told his boss that she feared he would attack her, no action was taken. Companies and government agencies must provide strong incentives for their employees to report worrying behavior — including clear and well-enforced reporting rules, and recognition for those who do the right thing. Those efforts should make clear that in some cases, the result of reporting will be that a troubled colleague gets much-needed help. Employees who are upset are far more common than mentally disturbed ones, and therefore more likely to pose an insider threat.

Most Viewed in World

More than half of the insiders in these cases were already seen as disgruntled before the incident occurred. Fortunately, simple steps can combat employee dissatisfaction. These include providing effective processes for making and resolving complaints, complimenting and rewarding employees for good work and reining in bullying bosses.

Organizations often make the mistake of thinking a single element of defense — such as background checks — is enough to protect them from insiders.

But defenses are often less effective than they seem. Years ago, for example, Roger Johnston and his colleagues in the Vulnerability Assessment Team at Los Alamos National Laboratory tested over types of widely used tamper-indicating seals. They found that all of them could be defeated with equipment from any hardware store, with average defeat times of less than five minutes. Hence, organizations need a comprehensive approach to protecting against insiders, from ensuring that no one can access the protected items without being monitored to building a vigilant, questioning culture.

Nuclear facilities, for example, should keep material that could be used in a nuclear bomb in a locked vault to which few have access, constantly monitor the vault, ensure that no one is ever in the vault alone and, where practical, keep the material in forms too big and heavy for one person to carry and hide. Monitoring people, information and physical spaces can be critical.