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Cyber Sabotage and Phone Hacking Rife
Despite the rampant nature of industrial espionage, it’s a topic that receives surprisingly little coverage in the media. When Germany announced recently that Chinese spies were costing its corporate world billions every year, as well as thousands of jobs, it was Britain’s Guardian that highlighted the story (July 22). As globalisation increasingly weaves us into its intricate pattern, most businesses still feel it’s something that can’t happen to them. Imagine being the subject of a damaging attack and not even knowing. That’s unforgivable in an era when diverse methods of sophisticated forensic investigation are readily available.
The German claim, which came from a counter-intelligence expert in one of the country’s states, warned that China was using an array of ‘polished methods’ to steal industrial secrets. Russia, he said, was also at the top of the list of nations utilising their national intelligence apparatus to help save billions on their own R & D budgets. While Russia had hundreds of thousands of agents, China had a million and ‘years more experience’. It also had the ambition of being the world’s leading economic power by 2020.
Internet spying techniques are way out in front and the areas most under attack are the automobile industry, renewable energy, chemicals, communications, optics, X-Ray technology, machinery, materials research and the arms industry. The information being gathered went beyond R & D results to management techniques and marketing strategies. The Germans see internet espionage as the biggest growth field, with what they refer to as the ‘thick fog of Trojan email attacks’ taking place against thousands of firms on a regular basis and adopting cover-up methods to disguise where the messages have come from.
And why wasn’t this huge and growing problem being discussed? Because, the Germans believe, companies don’t want to admit their weaknesses and lose customers. They’re also concerned about ruining business opportunities in China. Hence, only the tip of the iceberg is seen in the public domain.
But you can effectively assess your business’s vulnerability as well as put in place the means to protect your operations without having to do so in a blaze of publicity. The hallmark of the professional experts you need is discretion. If you’re worried that your company is already in deep trouble, a rapid response team can apply the latest state-of-the-art technical equipment and forensic tools to help you out. Make sure you call in the right people: highly trained and regarded experts with years of experience, and importantly, who are both certified and court recognised. They can track down, prove and identify anonymous email traffic, in addition to tracking and time-lining other suspicious internet activity.
While they’re at it, they can audit the entire range of technology that you, your firm and your staff are using. This process can throw up surprises like information leaks, employee misconduct, unauthorised access, fraud and general sloppiness in data maintenance and systems security.
You don’t have to master all this yourself in order to make your staff aware of the threats confronting your firm. An expert team is well versed in reducing the jargon and intricacies involved so that anyone can understand why and how their disposition and performance need to improve.
