Offboarding and Insider Access Are Now National Security Concerns for Engineering Teams

An article on DEV Community argues that engineers with legitimate access to sensitive assets such as AI model weights and chip designs can be targets for coercion, recruitment, or deception. It describes three categories of insider risk: malicious insiders, coerced employees, and those compromised through identity fraud or remote-hiring gaps. The author recommends time-boxed access instead of standing permissions, and automated offboarding tied to HR termination events. The piece also cautions against a surveillance-heavy culture and suggests treating open source dependencies with the same scrutiny.