Exposing the darkness within: A review of dark personality traits, models, and measures and their relationship to insider threats

Insider threats are a pernicious threat to modern organizations that involve individuals intentionally or unintentionally engaging in behaviors that undermine or abuse information security. Previous research has established that personality factors are an important determinant of the likelihood that an individual will engage in insider threat behaviors. The present article asserts that dark personality traits, non-clinical personality characteristics that are typically associated with patterns of anti-social and otherwise noxious interpersonal behaviors, may be particularly useful for understanding and predicting insider threat behaviors. Although some relationships between insider threats and dark traits have been documented, most attention has been devoted to a limited subset of dark traits. To address this issue, we critically review contemporary models of dark traits and their potential value for understanding both malicious and non-malicious insider threats, supplemented by discussions of subject matter expert ratings concerning the relevance of dark traits for both insider threat behaviors and cybersecurity personnel job performance. We then review potential assessment issues and provide evidence of possible moderators for the relationships under investigation. Finally, we develop avenues for future research, an agenda for improving the measurement of dark traits, and guidance for how organizations may implement the assessment of dark traits in their organizational processes.