The longstanding assumption that tenure, performance metrics, or expressed commitment serve as reliable indicators of the trustworthiness of an employee persists across many sectors. Indeed, the great majority of personnel are loyal. But, while small, the percentage of those who aren’t is still well above zero.
Moreover, this conflation of loyalty and security overlooks a fundamental reality: Loyalty is not a static trait, but a dynamic human response shaped by perceived fairness, personal circumstances, and organizational alignment. When grievances go unaddressed or external pressures mount, what appears as steadfast allegiance can quietly shift toward disaffection, resentment, or deliberate breaking of trust.
A half-century of observed patterns
In my more than 50 years of government, private sector, and journalistic endeavors, I have seen this pattern play out repeatedly.
What begins as genuine commitment can erode under the weight of unmet expectations, financial strain, ideological differences, outside influences, or simply the passage of time in roles that demand constant vigilance.
The insider who once seemed beyond reproach becomes the very vector through which sensitive data, intellectual property, or operational integrity is compromised. These are not isolated failures of vetting or technology; they are failures to recognize that loyalty is relational and conditional, not absolute.
How the misread appears in practice
Recent examples illustrate the point. In the US federal sphere, abrupt terminations under workforce reduction initiatives have left former employees with lingering access to sensitive systems, amplifying the potential for data exposure or retaliation. Corporate cases show a similar dynamic: engineers or executives who have spent years building institutional knowledge suddenly depart with proprietary information, motivated not by espionage but by opportunity or resentment.
These incidents are not anomalies. They reflect a broader pattern in which subjective judgments of loyalty, what I have come to call “personal barometers,” exist. For example, colleague to colleague, “Janet loves this company, she’s been here 20 years” may be a consensus view, yet it is not accompanied by objective, consistent, and transparent measures.
Personnel history blind spots
Organizations have long operated under the belief that loyalty, once demonstrated, becomes a durable shield against insider risk. Extended tenure is rewarded with escalating access privileges, high performers are granted broader system rights without commensurate behavioral review, and verbal affirmations of commitment are taken at face value. Yet time and again patterns repeat.
What begins as mutual confidence weakens not through dramatic betrayal but through subtle realignments in personal commitment. An employee who once identified strongly with the mission may begin to feel undervalued, overlooked for advancement, or weighed down by outside pressures. The organization, relying on its subjective gauge of past performance, fails to notice the change until the cow has bolted from the barn.
These patterns are neither new nor rare. They reflect a systemic reluctance to treat loyalty as a living relationship that requires active maintenance and verification.
The blind spot becomes visible
Today we have a confluence of forces that will expose the limitations of assumptive loyalty models. Economic volatility, including persistent inflation, ongoing AI-driven job displacements, and workforce reductions, will heighten personal and professional stressors for employees at every level.
Compounding the human element is the rapid emergence of AI agents as autonomous insiders. These systems, granted privileged access to sensitive data and decision-making workflows, introduce risks at machine speed: prompt misdirection, goal misalignment, or unintended exfiltration without human intent or oversight. We know AI agents are among the fastest-growing insider vectors, with autonomous capabilities outpacing traditional controls.
Geopolitical tensions further amplify the threat. Nation-state actors and proxies increasingly exploit economic pressures and ideological divides to groom or coerce individuals, blurring the lines between personal discontent and hostile external influence.
In critical sectors (transportation, finance, medical, energy) where elevated roles already receive greater scrutiny, the model proves resilient. Yet in less regulated environments, the absence of universal, consensual standards leaves organizations exposed. What was once a subtle misalignment becomes systemic exposure when human volatility meets machine autonomy and geopolitical opportunism.
Parallels to AI poisoning and the dual crisis of trust
These themes extend directly from an earlier column of mine, “AI poisoning and the CISO’s crisis of trust.” That discussion examined how poisoned training data undermines the foundational integrity of artificial intelligence systems, creating a crisis of confidence in the tools organizations increasingly depend upon. The parallel to human loyalty is clear: Just as corrupted inputs erode the reliability of AI outputs, unexamined or misread human loyalties erode the reliability of the individuals who design, operate, protect, and rely on those systems.
In both domains, reactive remediation is insufficient. Trust must be rebuilt through deliberate, continuous verification rather than periodic assumptions. The CISO’s crisis of trust is therefore dual: architectural in the machine domain and relational in the human domain. Coherence across these domains, ensuring that human and machine behaviors remain aligned with organizational intent, then emerges as the essential principle for long-term resilience.
The path forward
The path forward lies in embracing consensual, tiered verification, where elevated responsibility demands greater scrutiny. Positions with access to crown jewels — sensitive data, financial systems, or personnel records — or executive ranks inherently require proportionately more oversight, as regulated sectors have shown. Professionals in these roles accept this as part of the terrain, with history demonstrating minimal talent loss when frameworks are transparent and supportive.
Federal Trusted Workforce 2.0 provides a vital blueprint for the private sector. By 2026, with full implementation across government agencies, this program enrolls millions in continuous vetting, using automated record checks to review a plethora of risks in real-time and reducing reliance on periodic reviews. Private adaptations are feasible and essential: secure releases from key personnel for ongoing monitoring, mirroring TW 2.0’s supportive ethos without federal mandates. These measures are far less expensive than the multimillion-dollar costs of a single malicious insider event ($4.9M to $13.9M per incident per IBM/Mimecast 2025 analyses).
Broader practices include pulse surveys and engagement tools to surface misalignment early, integrated HR reviews, and wellness interventions. Gartner indicates AI-integrated behavioral programs reduce employee-driven incidents by 40%. These investments are economical, scalable, and consensual, fostering mutual trust.
The folly of equating loyalty with security must end. Through verifiable, human-centric vigilance, including consensual scrutiny scaled to responsibility, organizations can earn trust, not assume it, transforming vulnerabilities into resilience. In the era of zero trust, there should be no pushback in the adoption of “trust but verify” personnel policies.
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