Vanguard Magazine

30 FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020 www.vanguardcanada.com Insider Threats, Informants and Whistleblowers: CYBER Different AnimAls, sAme stripes? A long with "Atomic Blonde" and "Kraftidioten," one of my all-time favourite movies is "The Informant!" A bril- liant biographical-comedy, "The Informant!" is based on one of the biggest anti-trust cases in US history in- volving executives from one of the largest corporations at the time, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). The true story of Mark Whitacre, a young executive at ADM, the movie fol- lows Whitacre as he discovers that his executive colleagues at ADM are at the root of a massive, global lysine price-fix- ing scheme. Instead of colluding and go- ing along with their scam, Whitacre flips, turning evidence for the FBI and throw- ing his colleagues to the sharks. A rising star at ADM, Whitacre had, well, some issues … character issues. Whitacre was a bit of a sociopath with an outstanding talent for harnessing those flaws and using them for his own personal benefit. In Whitacre's duplicitousness, he was able to adeptly weave two personas: a dull, self-effacing bowl of oatmeal that cloaked a calculating, narcissistic egoist. Aside from being a dry and hysterically funny, the movie paints a complicated por- trait of a snitch with only a glimpse into the back story and psychological profile of the real Mark Whitacre. That's what makes the movie both interesting and poignant to the modern day phenomena of whistle- blowers, 'pro-social' activists, informants and insider threats. All three differing in motive and inten- tion, any of these actors can be damaging. So what's the difference and why does it matter? We'll get to that. Going back to the movie for a bit of clarity: in an unexpected twist, just after the FBI wrapped up their covert taskings, Whitacre's colleagues lay bare evidence – they had been gathering information on him for a while. From within the folds of the FBI investigation, Whitacre had been extorting millions from ADM. At first, Whitacre appears to be a run- of-the-mill whistleblower. Motivated by a seemingly good conscious and desire to do the "right thing," Whitacre is redeemed by being recruited as a government infor- mant. But then he devolves into a treacher- ous thief, hoodwinking the good guys (the FBI) and then bad guys (his colleagues) by becoming an even 'badder' guy than they were. How can it be that Whitacre was able to manifest these two personas with vastly different moral baselines? That's usually the first question asked after insider threat actors are caught. The movie doesn't tell us much about the Mark Whitacre before the lysine scan- dal, so connecting the dots to form a pic- ture is difficult, if not impossible, but it is unlikely it would have yielded much. We can assume he was someone who was at worst an opportunist and at the absolute worst a narcissist, incapable of staying out of the spotlight, whether for good or bad. Often the case with insider threat actors, not much is known about them beyond BY ValaRiE FindlaY

• Cover