An innovative tool to assess individual reliability among the military with regard to data security

Relevance. In the current international situation, despite augmenting threats to data security in the Russian Federation, the procedures granting access to classified information to the authorized military have not undergone any significant changes so far. The existing approaches and methods of selecting professionals to be authorized to access national security information (NSI) fail to consider the candidates’ personal profiles.

The study objective is to development of a set of methods allowing to assess and predict individual reliability of military professionals dealing with information security.

Methods. The Automated System for Psychophysiological Diagnostics of Addictive Behavior was used; it comprises 2 psychological questionnaires and 2 psychophysiological methods to assess individual reliability in 78 military professionals. Psychophysiological assessment is supplemented with stimuli relevant for data security. The examination required 15 to 20 minutes per each subject, including explanations and practice. To ensure that individual reliability assessment was of an expert level and unbiased, the professors and commanders were asked to complete a dedicated questionnaire per each subject. The results were analyzed using Statistica 12.0 software package.

Results and analysis. Once the subjects of various individual reliability scores completed all he automated assessments, the obtained database underwent a discriminant analysis. Eventually, a statistically significant model (p < 0.001) was developed per every subject to predict their personal reliability level. The model sensitivity was is 85.7 %, while the specificity was 100 %. The study identified the most significant psychophysiological markers of low reliability risk in students of higher military education institutions of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

Conclusion. The developed automated system for individual reliability assessment in data security is registered in the Rospatent Computer Software Register under N 2024663045 dated 03.06.2024 as the “Automated System for Individual Reliability Assessment among the Military Having Access to National Security Information”. Unlike other well-known methods to identify the risk of data protection offences, the proposed tool is user-friendly and eliminates such types of bias, as distorted interpretation of results, investigator’s proficiency and experience, or the pursuit of the subject to provide socially favorable replies.

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