The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) is turning to artificial intelligence and structured professional judgment tools to strengthen insider threat detection, according to James Shappell, director of the agency’s Insider Threat Management and Analysis Center, the Meritalk reported.

While speaking at the Intelligence and National Security Alliance  webinar, Shappell said the effort aims to speed up early detection while ensuring human oversight remains central.

He said that the agency is consolidating data to support timely, risk-based decisions and “not lose the human in the loop.”

DCSA is also developing a centralized capability to integrate its data holdings, aligning them with validated assessment tools such as WAVR-21 (Workplace Assessment of Violence Risk) and TRAP-18 (Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol).

“These tools already have research behind them,” Shappell said. “By mapping them to our existing data, we can identify gaps and triage risk signals in a way that brings a human analyst into the loop sooner.”

The goal, he stressed, is to reduce bias and improve response times by combining AI with expert judgment. “That’s the pathway that we’re working towards and obviously we want that to be something that permeates across the department.”