Social media monitoring used to be the elephant in the room when it came to the continuous vetting of employees working for the federal government. Security Executive Agent Directive 5 was signed in May 2016, paving the way for cyber vetting of cleared professionals. The policy came as the government was looking to advance its efforts to prevent insider threats following the 2013 “year of the insider,” when Aaron Alexis killed 12 people in a mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard, and Edward Snowden conducted a massive data breach, revealing thousands of highly classified government documents.
