Insider threats of Physical Protection Systems in nuclear power plants: Prevention and evaluation

Physical Protection Systems (PPS) are used to protect critical facilities and prevent against adversarial intrusion. The insider threats of PPS must be considered when analyzing the effectiveness of PPS. On the basis of the normal approach termed “Estimate of Adversary Sequence Interruption, EASI”, a novel method named “Estimate and Prevention of the Insider Threats, EPIT” was proposed for the specific estimation of insider behaviors. According to failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) method, the EPIT method adequately considers the common failure causes of protective devices to analyze the insider threat to the effectiveness of PPS. By the EPIT method results, a reasonable management and rights allocation of staffs can be figured out to mitigate insider threats.