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By SecureWorld News Team
Mon | Sep 24, 2018 | 6:39 AM PDT

This is another insider threat story involving US Intelligence.

In this case, we're talking about a now former National Security Agency (NSA) computer engineer who took home classified tools that forced the government to shut down some "signals intelligence" efforts.

Signals intelligence involves listening to and discovering what our adversaries are up to, including efforts by the government to hack into foreign computer networks.

Politico obtained a letter from Admiral Mike Rogers to a judge who will sentence the suspect, Nghia Pho, the last week of September. He detailed the significance of the insider threat:

"The fact that such a tremendous volume of highly classified, sophisticated collection tools was removed from secure space and left unprotected, especially in digital form on devices connected to the Internet, left the NSA with no choice but to abandon certain important initiatives, at great economic and operational cost."

One question that lingers: Why did Pho take data and tools from the NSA? Allegedly, he needed them to help document his work on an upcoming performance review.

Learning from insider threat cases

This story brings back a flood of insider threat cases we've covered at SecureWorld News or heard about at our regional conferences. All of them offer lessons worth sharing:

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