About Us
Human risk is inevitable.
Unmanaged human risk is optional.
Our Expertise
Vaillance Group is a global human risk management and insider threat consultancy trusted by organizations that cannot afford blind spots.
We help organizations understand, detect, and mitigate insider risk by focusing on what others overlook: human behavior, organizational pressure, and access. Our work sits at the intersection of people, culture, and security—long before risk turns into incident.
We don’t approach insider threat as a technical problem.
We treat it as what it is: a human one.
What We Do
Human Risk Assessments™ (HRA)
Our proprietary Human Risk Assessment™ takes a deep, structured look at the human factors that drive insider risk, including:
Organizational culture and morale
Governance and leadership signals
Role-based access and privilege
Workforce stressors and pressure points
Reporting pathways and trust dynamics
The result is a clear, actionable roadmap for reducing human risk and building or strengthening an insider threat program that actually works in the real world.
Insider Threat Program Design & Advisory
We design bespoke insider threat and human risk programs tailored to each organization’s culture, risk tolerance, and operating environment. No templates. No vendor-driven checklists.
Our consultants advise leadership, HR, security, and legal teams on:
Insider threat program development and maturity
High-risk roles and privileged access
Sensitive offboarding and investigations
Incident response and executive decision-making
Aligning security controls with trust and culture
We routinely support complex, high-stakes matters involving malicious insiders, negligence, fraud, data theft, and reputational risk.
Training & Awareness
We deliver high-impact training that resonates across roles—from boards and executives to HR leaders and frontline staff.
Our sessions focus on:
How insider threats actually emerge
Early behavioral and cultural warning signs
What leaders and employees should do differently
Reducing fear while increasing accountability
Training is practical, engaging, and grounded in real cases—not theory.
Keynote Speaking & Thought Leadership
Vaillance Group Founder Shawnee Delaney, a former Defense Intelligence Agency Case Officer and former head of Uber’s Global Insider Threat Program, delivers keynote presentations worldwide on insider threat, human risk management, espionage, and trust in the digital age.
Select members of the Vaillance Group team also speak at global conferences, leadership forums, and private executive events—bringing deep expertise from intelligence, law enforcement, cybersecurity, and investigations.
These talks are designed to challenge assumptions, change behavior, and elevate how organizations think about risk.
Who We Are
Vaillance Group consultants are world-leading experts in human risk management, insider threat, and behavioral risk—bringing rare experience from:
Intelligence and law enforcement operations
Nation-state threat environments
Fortune 500 enterprises
Highly regulated industries
Complex, sensitive corporate investigations
We have recruited insiders, investigated them, and built programs to stop them.
That perspective cannot be learned from a framework.
Our Approach
We believe effective security:
Protects people, not just systems
Detects risk early, not after damage
Strengthens trust instead of eroding it
Vaillance Group works with organizations that want to stay ahead of insider risk—not explain it after the fact.
Leadership
Shawnee Delaney is co-host of the popular YouTube series, Control Room, founder and CEO of Vaillance Group and an award-winning globally recognized expert in human risk management. As a decorated former Case Officer with nearly a decade at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), she conducted clandestine human intelligence (HUMINT) operations worldwide, including four combat zone tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, ultimately serving as both Detachment Chief and Supervisory Branch Chief.
After leaving DIA, Shawnee supported the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in protecting U.S. critical infrastructure with the Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) before leading the creation of insider threat programs at Fortune 500 companies such as Uber and Merck Pharmaceuticals.
Shawnee has advised nation-states, multinational corporations, and startups alike on preventing, detecting, and managing insider threats and continues to be a highly sought-after keynote speaker and consultant on insider threat, cybersecurity, and risk management.
She has written articles or been cited on Insider Threat in publications such as the Cipher Brief, USA Today, Fox Business, Yahoo Finance, Business Insider, the Hill, Spyscape, Associated Press, Benzinga, and the Financial Times, among other international periodicals.
She holds master’s degrees in Counter-Terrorism & Counter-Proliferation and Cybersecurity and is currently completing a third in Industrial-Organizational Psychology.
Meet The Team
Dan serves as a Senior Advisor on Intelligence for Vaillance Group. Mr. Hoffman has been a Fox News contributor since May 2018. Before joining Fox News, Hoffman had a distinguished career with the Central Intelligence Agency, where he was a three-time station chief and a senior executive Clandestine Services officer.
Hoffman also led large-scale HUMINT (human intelligence gathering) and technical programs and his assignments included tours of duty in the former Soviet Union, Europe, and war zones in the Middle East and South Asia. In addition, Hoffman served as director of the CIA Middle East and North Africa Division. During his 30 years of government service, Hoffman also served with the U.S. military including as an associate professor at the Army Command General Staff College.
Hoffman graduated from Bates College with a B.A. in History. He has a Master of Science from the London School of Economics and a Master of Public Administration from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (2006). Hoffman is the proud father of two children.
Robin Dreeke
Robin Dreeke is a Leadership, Behavioral, and Communication Expert as well as a Best-Selling Author. He is a veteran Marine Corps Officer, decorated FBI Counterintelligence Agent, and former Chief of the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program where his mission was strategizing counterintelligence operations domestically and abroad with other U.S. Intelligence Community services and foreign intelligence partners. During his 21+year career with the FBI, Mr Dreeke served as a Counterintelligence Agent in New York City, Norfolk Virginia, Fredericksburg Virginia, FBI Headquarters, and the FBI Academy at Quantico Virginia where he both ran the Behavioral Analysis Program as well as instructed Advanced Counterintelligence Training for the FBI. Since 2010, Mr. Dreeke has been a speaker/trainer and executive coach for Fortune 500 companies, Military, and Federal Agencies.
James C. Lawler
Mr. Lawler serves as a national security consultant and is the Senior Partner at MDO Group, which provides HUMINT training to the Intelligence Community and the commercial sector focused on WMD, CI, technical and cyber issues. Mr. Lawler has been the Lead Instructor and Supervisor of these training courses since 2007. He is a noted speaker on the Insider Threat in government and industry. Prior to this, Mr. Lawler served for 25 years as a CIA operations officer in various international posts and as Chief of the Counterproliferation Division's Special Activities Unit. His overseas assignments include Bern (1982-1985), Paris (1985-1989), Oslo (1989-1991), and Zurich (1991-1994).
Mr. Lawler was a member of CIA's Senior Intelligence Service (SIS-3) from 1998 until his retirement in 2005. He spent well over half of his CIA career battling the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. As Chief of the A.Q. Khan Nuclear Takedown Team, Mr. Lawler was the recipient of one of the CIA's Trailblazer Awards in 2007, marking the 60th anniversary of CIA. He also received the Director's Award from DCI George Tenet, the U.S. Intelligence Community's HUMINT Collector of the Year Award, and the Donovan Award from the CIA's Deputy Director of Operations.
Prior to his career in intelligence, Mr. Lawler practiced law and was the president of a steel components company in Texas. He is a graduate of Rice University, Houston, Texas; and the University of Texas School of Law. He is married to Ellen and has three children and seven grandsons. He has completed two novels: “Living Lies,” a story of the Iranian nuclear weapons program, and “In the Twinkling of an Eye,” about espionage and a devastating Russian-North Korean genetic bioweapon. Both have been cleared by the CIA’s Publication Review Board. He is currently writing his third espionage novel, “The Traitor’s Tale,” which is about treachery and treason deep within the CIA.
Joy Beland
Joy serves as a Strategic Advisor on the Insider Threat training programs for Vaillance Group. She joined Vaillance Group in 2020, after completing the Carnegie Mellon SEI Insider Threat Program Management and Vulnerability Assessor certificates.
Joy also currently serves as the CMMC Program Manager for Edwards Performance Solutions, delivering live Professional Instructor training for all areas of CMMC, as well as an active participant of the Commercial Cybersecurity Assessment Team.
Before joining Edwards, Joy served the MSP community as a cybersecurity education instructor, educating 3,000+ on cybersecurity fundamentals from 2019-2020. In addition to her facilitation experience, Joy owned a successful MSP in Los Angeles for 21 years.
Alex Hodgson
Alex is a Senior Advisor for Investigations for Vaillance Group. He is a fraud investigator, an England and Wales-qualified forensic accountant, and a former detective with the Metropolitan Police Service.
He is currently the lead investigator in Europe, the Middle East and Africa for one of the world's largest tech companies, where he employs his range of technical and financial investigation skills to track down internal bad actors, as well as to combat organized, large-scale fraud rings attacking from the outside.
He is an Oxford graduate and lives in the Netherlands with his wife and a small, talkative child.
Maggie Buck
Maggie is a strategic Insider Threat and IT Security professional with experience spanning the assessment, development, and management of security, systems, and network infrastructure in enterprise environments. Currently she works for a multinational pharmaceutical company where she leads a team tasked with identifying Insider Threat behaviors, facilitating investigation of complex security issues and performing data manipulation and analysis in order to tell a story and make smarter choices. Before finding her way to Insider Threat, Maggie did consulting work in Digital Forensics, Information Security and Network Engineering.
Maggie’s undergraduate studies were in Computer Science and Public Administration and she earned an MBA with an emphasis in Finance and Accounting. She has obtained many industry certifications in security, forensics, networking and insider threat. She spends her non-working hours chasing her two small children, reading or half-heartedly learning to play the banjo.