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• #To catch a spy how to#

It was just another one of the thousands of cases Shawnee’s handled in the corporate world. She feared the problem might escalate into an active shooter case if she wasn’t on top of the situation. “He morphed into a different person,” Shawnee said. In that case, the man began arriving at work unshaven, with stains on his clothes, and appeared to be mentally unraveling.

She was too busy dealing with other insider threats, including an employee at an unrelated company who leaked sensitive corporate information to the media after being turned down for a small bonus. The FBI had already been alerted to possible espionage by a state actor and took over the file so Shawnee wasn’t part of the follow-up investigation. “It could have been corporate espionage or industrial espionage, and in big cases like this it really is the best idea to get law enforcement involved,” Shawnee added. She was also concerned about his previous military service in The People's Liberation Army, China’s armed forces. In this case, Shawnee wasn’t convinced by the employee’s explanations and there were red flags in his email correspondence such as suspicious IP addresses. “There is certain evidence I have prepared that I can slide across the table and say: ‘Okay, can you explain this?’” ‍ “I always keep my evidence close-hold and offer that person sitting across from me the opportunity to admit it, or deny it, or tell me what their reasoning was,” she said. Shawnee put the whole picture together and arranged to interview the suspect before he was even aware an investigation was underway. She spoke to colleagues who’d reported suspicious behavior to get more details. She checked security badge logs to find out when the employee was swiping in and out of the building, imaged his hard drive, checked to see if he’d used USB drives to exfiltrate data, and examined email and internet traffic among other techniques. That’s when Shawnee began her ‘deep dive’ forensic investigation. Other colleagues noticed he wasn’t as focused as usual. Remember the employee asleep under his desk? Another co-worker saw him having a sponge bath in the office washroom after an apparent sleepover and reported his behavior. Shawnee Delaney instigated an investigation into an insider threat that may have involved China ‍ To catch a spy‍ The ex-DIA officer was working for a US company when Shawnee came face-to-face with a man she suspected of being a Chinese military spy. By the time Shawnee graduated with her second Master’s degree - with straight ‘A’s’, of course - she was an expert on cyber espionage, insider threats, and corporate security. So Shawnee quit, had twin girls and a son, then decided the future of terrorism was in cyberspace so she reinvented herself. And I decided: ‘You know what? I don’t get paid enough for this.’” If Shawnee wanted to be successful at her next goal - motherhood - she’d need to spend more than one or two days a month at home.

“I served four war zone tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and on each tour I had one, or two - or even three - near-death experiences. ‍ By the time US SEAL Team Six descended on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan in 2011, Shawnee had spent almost six years at the DIA recruiting and running foreign assets, tracking down crucial al-Qaeda intelligence, and staring down death. On weekends off, Shawnee practiced her surveillance techniques.

#To catch a spy how to#

The training involved six months at ‘the Farm’, the boot camp for budding US spies, where she learned how to conduct high-threat tactical meetings and recruit ‘assets’ at faux embassy parties. She was also part of the team hunting 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. Before getting too far into the details of the Spy vs Spy showdown, however, it may be helpful to know a bit more about Shawnee, the laser-focused US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) officer who honed her tradecraft during tours of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Europe. “People described him as distracted.” While Shawnee can’t reveal the name or location of the company for security reasons - nor the sensitive trade secrets he may have stolen - the circumstantial evidence was significant enough that Shawnee decided to do a digital forensic ’deep dive’. He seemed kind of squirrely,” Shawnee told SPYSCAPE. Insider threats come in many disguises, including one incredible case where Shawnee Delaney’s US company discovered a suspected Chinese spy curled up asleep under his desk early in the morning. Ex-DIA officer Shawnee Delaney found herself mixed up in a case involving China and cyber espionage.