Whistleblowing analysis for detection of insider threat in an multicultural environment

Abstract

With the rise of terrorism, importance of nuclear security has been paid increased attention recently. Many recommendations are also being made to enhance nuclear security of a nuclear power plant. Furthermore, as more and more countries are involved with nuclear power developments through international cooperation, nuclear security of a nuclear power plant takes international dimension, possibly involving multi-culture issues. One of the issues that have received particular attention in recent years in nuclear security discussions is the threat by insiders. Insiders, with access to the system knowledge, have advantage in adversely affecting the system if necessary motivation is involved. Vulnerability to an insider threat could be significant as detection of such threat is very difficult and potential impact on physical security of a plant from such threat could be significant. If nuclear security of a nuclear power plant is run by multicultural workforce, early detection of an insider threat could be even more difficult due to cultural differences involved among the manpower. In this study, whistleblowing is examined as potentially an effective way in detecting an insider threat, in particular when multicultural workplace is involved. In this study, relationships between culture dimension and whistleblowing tendency are analyzed based on survey results for various ethnic groups. Previous study on the issue by John P.Keenan’s and Heung-sik Park are utilized. From these, ways to establishing optimized reporting channels through whistleblowing in a multicultural working environment are examined. This paper also attempts to give recommendations to properly use and encourage whistleblowing for the multi-cultural workforce in the UAE, as a test case.