Real-Time Detection of Insider Threats Using Behavioral Analytics and Deep Evidential Clustering

Abstract: Insider threats represent one of the most critical challenges in modern cybersecurity. These threats arise from individuals within an organization who misuse their legitimate access to harm the organization's assets, data, or operations. Traditional security mechanisms, primarily designed for external attackers, fall short in identifying these subtle and context-aware threats. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for real-time detection of insider threats using behavioral analytics combined with deep evidential clustering. Our system captures and analyzes user activities, applies context-rich behavioral features, and classifies potential threats using a deep evidential clustering model that estimates both cluster assignment and epistemic uncertainty. The proposed model dynamically adapts to behavioral changes and significantly reduces false positives. We evaluate our framework on benchmark insider threat datasets such as CERT and TWOS, achieving an average detection accuracy of 94.7% and a 38% reduction in false positives compared to traditional clustering methods. Our results demonstrate the effectiveness of integrating uncertainty modeling in threat detection pipelines. This research provides actionable insights for deploying intelligent, adaptive, and robust insider threat detection systems across various enterprise environments.