These, of course, are incoming threats. On the outgoing side, there are employees who divulge sensitive corporate information while on social networking sites. There, their idle banter can be harvested as public property and used in a way that may damage your company’s reputation, if not demolish public trust in your products and services.

Just how insidious social networking sites can be was brought home to Britons when the UK Justice Minister, Jack Straw, revealed in February that 30 Facebook pages had been taken down because prisoners were using them to taunt their victims. Facebook removed the offending pages within 48 hours. “It’s not that people at Facebook have a different sense of morality from us,” the Minister told the BBC. “They have the same sense of morality but they have to police hundreds of thousands of their sites, so what we have to do is set up a better system with Facebook.” He said he was reassured by the cooperation his department was receiving from Facebook as the government sought a longer-term solution “to this very modern version of the old problem of victim harassment.”

In January, it was revealed that one of the UK’s most notorious gangsters had used the site to threaten his enemies while serving a 35-year sentence in a maximum security prison. That underworld boss, who had helped plot the murder of two grandparents, sent messages to 565 “friends” after being transferred to a prison where he claimed that management had a liberal attitude to social networking. “I will be home one day,” he wrote in one message, “and I can’t wait to look into certain people’s eyes and see the fear of me being there.”

While this new networking medium can be highly beneficial to many businesses, there are ways of guarding against it compromising your corporate integrity. Anti-virus and anti-spam products simply can’t provide you with the protection you need, but there are comprehensive security packages that offer more. Far and away, it is best to call in a group of experienced professionals that can assess your company’s existing system, recommend the software you need, and while at it brief your staff on the danger points to watch out for. Remember, it’s your corporate information you’re aiming to protect – not simply your hardware and technology. A professional team can help you with all of this, using sophisticated techniques like computer forensics to provide you with a clear picture of what’s going on in your business and what has to be done.

A McAfee survey of 600 international technology executives (‘In the Crossfire: Critical Infrastructure in the Age of Cyberwar’, available at www.mcafee.com), released in January, helped wipe away any New Year complacency. It found that recession-driven cuts in spending on online security over the past 12 months had led to an increase in threats. The result was that more than one-third of those interviewed believed their sector was unprepared to deal with a major attack. More than half felt that the laws in their country were inadequate in deterring potential cyber-attacks, and almost half lacked any faith in their government’s capacity to prevent or deter them. One expert believes that consumers will increasingly bear the cost of online crime and security breaches as organisations seek to limit their exposure in an escalating battle against such attacks.

Art Coviello, president of EMC’s data security arm RSA, for example, has little confidence in government, pointing out that data security regulations have fallen way behind the internet age. He believes that government regulation on security should focus on outcomes and not on prescriptive measures. Data breach regulation is a great regulatory initiative because it does just that. It says, if you are negligent in protecting information, you need to publicly confess. He says it’s amazing what California has done to ensure that people do the right thing because they don’t want to be embarrassed. “Compare that,” says Coviello, “with prescriptive regulation like the obligation to encrypt this or provide that. That relies on the government having the kind of technological sophistication to keep up with the threats. What do you suppose are the odds that governments are going to move quickly enough? They can’t even update the laws for the internet age, let alone data protection. It’s much easier for government to say don’t let something happen and put the onus back on the organisation to protect its infrastructure however it sees fit.”

This, of course, is government acting in the legislative and bureaucratic sense. When you look at the electronic eavesdropping capabilities of most governments, the picture changes significantly. But that capacity isn’t necessarily geared to helping you. Rather, it’s devoted to intelligence gathering, whether on the political, economic or anti-terror fronts – and let’s not forget, sometimes on the commercial. As Paul Mah notes in an article in the Florida-based TechWatch brief (“Is cyber warfare the new corporate reality?”, January 29), in which he commented on the McAfee findings on infrastructure threats, “What I find deeply disturbing is the prospect of rooms crammed full of elite hackers working from multiple systems as they conduct round-the-clock cyber campaigns against less well-supported corporate entities.”

Today, he observes, it would be unusual to enter a corporate office and find staffers without access to a dedicated workstation. And most households in developed nations have more than one PC at home, which would likely have some kind of access to resources on remote corporate networks. “The chilling truth,” he says, “is this: a successful exploit on any one of these machines could potentially tear a huge security hole in a network. How can smaller companies stand a chance against the forces that foreign governments can bring to bear? Is the ability to protect against cyber attacks the new reality for corporations around the world.”

Michael Malin, executive vice president of Mandiant, a US information security firm, knows how serious the challenge can be. His company released a report in late-January that shed light on the ultra-sophisticated art of so-called advanced persistent threat (APT) attacks. Malin points out that, “once hackers are in, they don’t need to hack through again; they set up camp with a longer-term presence that allows them to move about the company freely and typically undetected.” Alan Shimel, CEO of The CISO Group, another US security firm, sounds a warning to all of us worried about cyber attacks. “From a security point of view,” he says, “there’s no magic bullet. Nothing is going to make you immune.”

There is another area which companies often overlook. Asked about how social networking affected data security, Art Coviello suggested it has become a key avenue of malware infection. “Not unlike the physical world,” he says, “if you have an infection like HINI virus (swine flu) and you go into a crowded nightclub, you’re going to spread that infection all across the nightclub. Hackers have found the social networks, and it’s very easy for you to pass on these pieces of malware across the social network environment. Our advice to organisations is that they ignore these phenomena at their peril, which is not to say ban them. To try to stop the proliferation is folly. To embrace it, but embrace it with a level of control, is the way to go about it.”

So, no matter which business sector you’re in you will in some way be vulnerable to the myriad dangers lurking in cyberspace. As with space-junk, even the smallest fragment can destroy your business operation, if not your company’s reputation as well. Here are three ways to be proactive and start protecting your company:

1. Know Exactly What You’re Up Against. The cyber challenge is not an ad hoc process, whereby you simply react to a perceived threat. It is constantly evolving and unrelenting in nature. You need to call in a group of professionals with a solid track record in such things as computer forensics, transactional analysis and fraud detection to map out for you not only the external cyber threats confronting your business but also internal vulnerabilities that make your organisation more susceptible to penetration than it needs to be. It’s a waste of time looking at one without the other. If you hire the right experts they will provide you with a thorough audit of your operations, the strengths and weaknesses of the electronic equipment you’re using and of specific danger spots in your business where human frailties and foibles beckon a hacker to “step this way”.

2. Plan for Ongoing Protection. While large corporations often have a security section devoted to the cyber challenge, most small and medium businesses don’t – nor can they afford to pay constant attention to it. Consider designating a staff member, whether it be your firm’s resident geek or someone else suitably qualified, to receive regular updates from the professional group you’ve called in and who can liaise with them as required. As CEO or manager you must be well acquainted – and be seen to be such – with every significant development in this security arena. As with a sense of corporate integrity, so too with security: it’s a disposition that starts at the top. Be prepared for occasional briefings that the professionals may choose to give to you, and you alone, in the first instance. Nowadays, cyber security is something that you need to stay on top of, as busy as you are. It is not something to be delegated and dismissed until a major executive decision has to be made. If you lack an informed overview your staff will pick it up quickly – and some may exploit it.

3. Think Big, and Outside the Square. Hardly any business can now isolate itself from cyber threats. No matter how insignificant a certain aspect of your business may seem to be, somebody in a vastly different place in today’s globalised system is likely to have a keen interest in knowing all about it. You don’t have to be involved in a major international tender process or in cutting-edge research and development to be targeted. A subcontractor or provider of component parts sometimes unwittingly offers the point of entry that someone else seeks. Equally, your company’s contribution to a larger process may be the missing link in a chain that someone else is trying to replicate. Don’t overlook the immense power that a foreign government’s intelligence apparatus has – whether electronic or human – if you possess something that’s vital to the growth of an industrial sector on the other side of the globe.

In short, don’t think you need to learn all this by yourself. The right group of professionals, especially with solid global and cross-cultural experience, can get you up to speed quickly – and keep you up-to-date. They can also brief your employees if necessary. Not to do this, is to make your business a “sitting duck”.

As the Financial Times highlighted on February 2, this information was obtained from Freshfields, a London legal firm, by means of a freedom of information request. Of the 30 businesses involved, overseas companies accounted for 15 per cent, up from 2.4 per cent last year. The increase comes at a time when the FSA has also significantly expanded the assistance it renders to foreign regulators. The Authority received 830 new requests for help in the 2008-09 fiscal year, up 27 per cent from 2007-08. While the FSA has not particularly targeted overseas companies, the increase is a natural outgrowth of the financial crisis, which exposed a number of cross-border frauds and failures and prompted regulators to start working more cooperatively, Freshfields said. “London is a financial centre and governments are under pressure to respond to the crisis. If they are all talking to each other, someone is going to do something,” Raj Parker, one of the law firm’s partners pointed out.

Britain’s rising international focus is being replicated around the world. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) asked for overseas assistance 774 times during the 2009 fiscal year, an increase of 30 per cent. In London, the FSA went to the Court of Appeal on February 2 to challenge a lower court ruling that limited its ability to gather documents for the SEC after senior officials from both regulators met the previous day to hammer out new areas of cooperation. “The global banking crisis will only have reinforced the resolve of the SEC and [Department of Justice] to hunt down those responsible for such activity. Regardless of the outcome of this hearing, this trend of close cooperation is here to stay and means that both businesses and individuals are at risk of lengthy investigations in both the US and UK,” said Neill Blundell, head of the fraud group at Eversheds, another legal firm.

Not only are regulators more interested in looking overseas in the wake of the crisis, but international treaties are also making it easier to do so. The International Organisation of Securities Commissions has spent the past five years encouraging regulators worldwide to sign up to an information-sharing agreement. So far, 64 countries have done so.

The writing is on the wall. If you suspect that this sort of activity is going on in your business there is only one way to avoid being caught up in the ever-expanding international net. You need to call in a group of professionals who can use state-of-the-art technology and sophisticated methods of financial analysis and computer forensics to give you an accurate picture of what you will ultimately have to take responsibility for. Make sure you pick a group that has extensive overseas experience, a proven track record and can also present their findings to you in a way that fits the evidentiary requirements of your legal advisers if you need to progress to that stage.

One country that’s redeemed itself is Australia, which has risen to eighth spot in 2009 from ninth in 2008. It held top spot in 2002, when it was considered the least likely nation in the world to allow corruption. That was before the exposure of dealings by the Australian Wheat Board with the Iraqi Government of Saddam Hussein. Transparency International’s latest Corruption Perception Index (CPI) has New Zealand replacing Denmark in top place. The CPI is a composite index that draws on 13 expert and business surveys to measure the perceived levels of public sector corruption in any given country. In the important regional breakdown of the Index, Australia ranked third for the Asia-Pacific, behind New Zealand and Singapore.

Overall, most of the 180 countries still scored under five on a zero-to-ten scale, with zero perceived as highly corrupt and 10 to mean low levels of corruption. The challenge, therefore, remains undeniable. Highest scorers in 2009 were New Zealand at 9.4, Denmark at 9.3, Singapore and Sweden at 9.2, and Switzerland at 9.0. Australia, Canada and Iceland came in at 8.7. Fragile, unstable states that are scarred by war and ongoing conflict rated lowest, with Somalia at 1.1, Afghanistan at 1.3, Myanmar at 1.4, and Sudan at 1.5.

As Transparency International points out, the latest results are of great concern because they show that corruption continues to lurk where opacity rules, where institutions still need strengthening and where governments have not implemented anti-corruption legal frameworks. Even industrialised countries cannot be complacent: the supply of bribery and the facilitation of corruption often involve businesses based in their countries. Financial secrecy jurisdictions, linked to many countries that top the CPI, severely undermine efforts to tackle corruption and recover stolen assets.

Corrupt money, TI says, must not find a safe haven. It is time to put an end to excuses. The OECD’s work in this area is welcome, but there must be more bilateral treaties on information exchange to fully end the secrecy regime. At the same time, companies must cease operating in renegade financial centres. Bribery, cartels and other corrupt practices undermine competition and contribute to massive loss of resources for development in all countries, especially the poorest ones. Between 1990 and 2005, more than 283 private international cartels were exposed that cost consumers around the world an estimated $US300 billion in overcharges.

The Group of 20, it points out, has made strong commitments to ensure that integrity and transparency form the cornerstone of a newfound regulatory structure. As the G20 tackles financial sector and economic reforms, it is critical to address corruption as a substantial threat to a sustainable economic future. The G20 must also remain committed to gaining public support for essential reforms by making institutions such as the Financial Stability Board and decisions about investments in infrastructure, transparent and open to civil society input.

Globally and nationally, it says, institutions of oversight and legal frameworks that are actually enforced, coupled with smarter, more effective regulation, will ensure lower levels of corruption. This will lead to a much-needed increase of trust in public institutions, sustained economic growth and more effective development assistance. Most importantly, it will alleviate the enormous scale of human suffering in the countries that perform most poorly in the Index.

In your business, then, don’t wait until financial fraud or some other malpractice is exposed right under your nose. Call in a team of experienced professionals that can use state-of-the-art technology and sophisticated methods of financial analysis and computer forensics to help you. Not only will they warn of where danger lurks, but they’ll also show you how to eradicate it.

It started when graduate trainee, Holly Leam-Taylor, planned an awards ceremony to name the most attractive men in her office. Thinking this would be a bit of tongue-in-cheek fun, she emailed a small number of female colleagues at City accountancy firm Deloitte asking them to vote. With nine categories such as “Fittest body” and “Boy most likely to sleep his way to the top”, her message certainly grabbed attention. So much so that the email was forwarded around the world, spreading like wildfire over the internet. Soon millions of people had read it. But it wasn’t such a laughing matter for her managers and less than 24 hours after sending the email, Ms Leam-Taylor felt obliged to resign. A graduate in management from Warwick University, she had joined Deloitte as a consultant analyst in August 2009 on an estimated $45,000 a year.

Speaking from the Surrey home where she lives with her parents, the 22-year-old said, “It was just a lighthearted joke to celebrate Christmas. It’s a complete shock that one email could spread like this and who would think it could get so far out of hand? In retrospect, it was a stupid thing to do but there wasn’t anything controversial or sexist in there. But if I could take it back I would and I will be so, so careful about sending any emails in future.” She hit the send button on her Christmas Awards email on Tuesday, December 8, and when she arrived at her office the next day found her inbox full. “It was crazy,” she said. “I had so many emails from all over the world saying I had made people’s day and that I’d put a smile on their face. I had loads of emails from men in the office nominating themselves for various categories and everyone thought it was hilarious. But once I realised it had been forwarded outside the office I realised both Deloitte’s and my reputation had been damaged so I decided to hand my notice in there and then.”

Ms Leam-Taylor sent her letter of resignation at 3.00 p.m. on Wednesday and left the office. She insists she was not asked to do so, but thought she should jump before she was pushed, adding that, “In all our contracts it says we mustn’t use our emails for personal use so I knew I was in breach of that.”

A Deloitte spokesman said, “We are very disappointed by this matter. While intended as a joke, this is a stark reminder of the need to exercise careful judgement when using email.”

That sums up the situation well. Ms Leam-Taylor’s case is a salutary warning to all employers to make sure those working in their enterprise understand that a company’s communications system is for business-related matters only. While jokes are usually lighthearted, that’s not always the case. They may also be highly defamatory. Some are even sinister and have nothing at all to do with humour. In a flash, such emails can destroy your company’s reputation. If you suspect that someone might be generating traffic like this in your firm, call in a team of professionals quickly. Using state-of-the-art technology and new areas of expertise like computer forensics, they can provide you with a clear picture of what’s going on.

At the time that 52-year-old Tom Petters was arrested in October 2008 and indicted two months later, the allegations against him amounted to one of largest Ponzi schemes in US history. But New York financier, Bernard Madoff, confessed a few months later to a much bigger fraud – an estimated $US65 billion – and is now serving 150 years in prison. Petters, a gregarious businessman, started out selling stereo equipment in high school and later became a liquidator of overstocked goods before his company ventured into retail-based fraud.

The US government has accused him of promising fat returns to investors who lent him money to purchase surplus merchandise, then resell it to big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores and Costco Wholesale. But there were no such transactions and profits funded his ‘extravagant’ lifestyle, which included lavish homes in several states, a number of expensive boats, Mercedes cars and also a Bentley. Moreover, he acquired a number of legitimate companies, including Polaroid Corporation and Sun County Airlines. It all came crashing down in late 2008 when longtime Petters Company employee, Deanna Coleman, approached the US Attorney in Minneapolis. She laid out the nature of the fraud and her role in it, and agreed to wear a recording device that picked up damaging conversations with her boss and others in the following days. She later pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud, and testified for the government in the trial. In all, three co-workers and four business partners pleaded guilty to aiding the scheme and several testified against Petters.

During the trial, 42 government witnesses testified, compared with 12 called by the defence. Ms. Coleman’s tape recordings were key to the prosecutors’ case. In one of the tapes, Petters is heard saying, “This is one big [expletive] fraud.”

Once Petters was arrested, many of his companies filed for bankruptcy-court protection. The court appointed a federal receiver to sell the various pieces of his business empire and to dispose of most of his personal assets and those of the co-conspirators to raise funds to repay creditors. Polaroid was the largest asset so far to be sold, but less than $US200 million has been recovered, according to the receiver. Hedge funds suffered the biggest losses when the Petters collapse. Their managers thought they were providing short-term loans to finance deals for merchandise, but the goods didn’t exist. Instead, early investors were paid with later investors’ money.

Interestingly, in the closing arguments in the case in November, one of Petters’ lawyers claimed that his client’s life “is one of innocence, optimism and generosity … This has never been a Ponzi [scheme] for him.” The Assistant US Attorney, however, disagreed, saying that Tom Petters was not a victim. Instead he was committing fraud on a “massive, massive scale”.

For any corporate manager who senses that something like this might be going on inside his or her firm or inside a client company, it pays to call in an experienced professional team that can use state-of-the-art technology and financial and computer forensics to provide an accurate picture or reality. To delay is the worst thing you can do.

The original charges against Satyam’s former chairman revolved around his admission that he had misrepresented the company’s financial condition by inflating assets and understating debts. This included a fictitious cash balance of more than $US1 billion. He stunned India’s financial world when he made his confession. At the time, Satyam was rated as India’s fourth-largest information technology services group by revenue, with world-wide clients like General Motors, Nestlé and General Electric.

The new charges show that others at Satyam had been creating fake customer identities and generating fake invoices against them to boost revenue figures. They had also forged board resolutions and obtained unauthorised loans that were used to buy properties. Investigators have found over 1,000 such properties, purchased by the accused with the siphoned funds and involving 2,430 hectares of land as well as housing plots and building space.

Moreover, large sums of money were made from the sale of shares and from dividends received from inflated profits. A massive falsification of accounts also took place when a Hyderabad-based business process outsourcing company was bought out. All this has increased the original fraud by 40 per cent. The January scandal led to a government takeover and the eventual sale of a majority shareholding to another Indian firm, the mid-sized computer outsourcer, Tech Mahindra. This saved Satyam from imminent collapse. The company’s reputation, and the value of its shares, has suffered as a result, though the latter rebounded on the Bombay Stock Exchange when a senior executive announced in late November that Satyam was not expected to face any additional liability.

Many firms, in India or elsewhere, would not survive this sort of buffeting, which attests to the regard that both investors and customers have for Satyam and its technical skills.

Not all firms, of course, have fraud begin at the top and filter down into the executive ranks. It is far more common for it to thrive at a lower level. But if you have suspicions about what might be happening in the company you’re running – whether vague or substantial – you need to know what an experienced professional team can do to help you. They can scan millions of files and individual transactions involving your firm, and from anywhere in the world, to strip out and determine the pattern of what has occurred. They can help you make sense of the outcome, especially through visualisation and mapping, and present those results as indisputable evidence.

The best professionals are also aware of privacy issues and know when and how to coordinate their investigation with relevant police agencies as well as with your lawyers.

Nearly half of the financial sector workers surveyed in New York and London admitted that they would take with them sensitive corporate information if they were sacked. The survey, carried out by management specialists Cyber Ark in November, also showed that just over 40 per cent had already taken sensitive data with them to their new jobs. Just under 40 per cent said they would download such information pre-emptively if they sensed that their position was at risk. Over 30 per cent revealed that they would not hesitate to pass on sensitive corporate data if that were to be instrumental in their gaining employment for friends and relatives. Topping the information-stealing list was customer-related information – which in its own right could contain highly sensitive records – followed by product information and company strategy.

As frightening as these figures are, even more so was the fact that a quarter of the workers surveyed acknowledged that in light of the current economic downturn they felt less commitment and loyalty to their employer. As the UK director of Cyber Ark put it, “employee confidence has been rocked. Many workers are willing to do practically anything to ensure job security or make themselves marketable – including committing a crime.” Not surprisingly, 85 per cent of those surveyed recognised that it was illegal to download company information. Nevertheless, of those who admitted they would steal data some also stated that they would take passwords and any other information they needed in order to continue accessing the network of their previous employer.

Another revelation that should put all corporate managers on alert was the admission by 30 per cent of those surveyed that they would not hesitate to take a look at any redundancy list known to exist and would even be willing to bribe someone they knew in the corporation’s human relations section to gain that access. Equally shocking was the fact that more than half thought it was simpler stealing information this year than it was in 2008. That’s an increase of nearly 30 per cent.

These sorts of results are a salutary warning to company managers to act without delay. An experienced professional team will show you how your network can be monitored in a variety of ways to guard against this threat – one that is likely to continue to increase in the foreseeable future.

Here are a number of areas where you need to be aware of what your employees are doing. If you’re not sure how to monitor their activities, call in a team of experienced professionals who are sensitive to the privacy and legal issues sometimes involved. Using sophisticated equipment and new techniques like computer forensics, they will analyse all of your electronic traffic, access to your databases, incoming and outgoing mobile and text communications, business transactions and other relevant dimensions of your corporate operations in order to provide you with a map of what’s really going on. Once that’s established, they can also help you grapple with what needs to be done.

1. The Mobile Employee.

The widespread use of 3G wireless broadband means that much of what used to be done in your office can now be carried out almost anywhere. Smartphones, for example, have all but replaced the need for an office with a fixed line. While BlackBerry has contributed greatly to satisfying our addiction to mobile email, the market for staying connected while you’re out and about has expanded enormously. In a similar way, notebooks are increasingly coming with built-in 3G wireless for internet access on the road. If you have a fair percentage of your staff constantly outside your office you need to know whether you’re getting value for money from them, be it in customer relations terms or through recruiting new clients. Do you have any idea where they are when they’re outside your office? There are ways of checking.

2. The Politically Active Employee.

Be aware of staff members who might be involved in politics (which is their business) but who could be using your system to communicate their views in a way that’s easily traceable to your company. Many corporate emails are clearly marked with your company name and any linkage with certain forms of political activity could impact heavily on your business reputation. Recently in Australia, when an attempt was under way to ‘spill’ the country’s Opposition Leader, politicians on his side engaged in a flurry of Tweeting with journalists and others outside, breaching party room confidentiality. This was a first for a political crisis in Australia, with social media networks taking the general public inside the process in real time. Some of the politicians involved chose a more indirect route, contacting friends in the corporate world and asking them to pass on messages to their media contacts.

You need to know who’s politically active in your company and how they might utilise your system to pursue those interests. A lot could be at stake, particularly if your firm is involved in government contracts. Feelings on issues like climate change may run hot in your office and you should know who’s most likely to be proselytising in a manner that links their strongly held views to your corporate image.

3. The Eternal Shopper.

At this time of the year in many countries a massive shopping splurge is under way and social networking sites will feature like never before. US retailers have already unleashed their traditional post-Thanksgiving holiday shopping promotions. This year, they are reinforcing their efforts with an array of social networking weapons, including Twitter and Facebook. As a company manager, you probably accept that a certain amount of working time will be lost in the hunt for a bargain, whether it’s in the context of Christmas shopping, for some other religious or cultural festival, or just for regular purchases. But is that all there is to it? Are some of your employees shopping on your company account, perhaps not bothering to pay the money back?

Some firms have found that employees are producing their own goods or services, with sales peaking over the holiday period, and they’re running that private business online through your office system. This practice is increasingly common but should be strongly discouraged, not least because it may have legal implications for your firm. A good professional team will know how to identify these patterns of activity within your company’s communications system.

4. The Indulger in Pornography.

You can safely assume that a number of employees are accessing pornography online from your office. But accessing sites is one thing; ordering illegal material, especially relating to paedophilia, is yet another. Communicating with underage children for the purpose of sex is even worse. The staff members concerned may not only find themselves in serious trouble with the law – with all the attendant publicity – but your company could well be implicated, too. Again, a professional team can identify this sort of activity quickly and equip you with the evidence you need when you act.

5. Whistleblowers and Leakers.

Whistleblowing has played a key role in a number of recent high profile scandals, especially on Wall Street. Naturally, you want to know what’s gone wrong in your firm before you learn all about it on the TV news. In many countries, there is little or no protection – and certainly no reward – for whistleblowers, but in the US there is and it acts as a powerful incentive. It’s called the False Claims Act, and a Google search will list legal firms dedicated to acting on behalf of whistleblowers so that they profit from their disclosures. Most cases in America revolve around fraud, and the results have been staggering. The whistleblowers themselves have benefited to the extent of some billions of dollars.

Using a number of sophisticated methods, especially in financial analysis and computer forensics, a professional team can often pre-empt the whistleblower’s honourable cause by identifying where illegal activity is taking place. The same applies to leakers, though the latter often fall into a malevolent category. The key is to act early.

6. The Short-Term Employee.

Older company managers remember the days when employees signed on for a career, or at least for a lengthy period of time, and tended to identify closely with corporate goals and standards. Nowadays, flitting between jobs is commonplace, a practice only somewhat curtailed as a result of rising levels of unemployment in many economies. Watch out for employees who are accessing your databases – with or without permission – in order to download information that will help them move on to another company. In the process, some may be selling your top commercial secrets for personal gain. Others may be exploiting customer relations to select and approach prospective employers.

Again, a professional analysis of who’s accessing what and for what purpose can often speedily identify staff members engaged in this nefarious activity.

7. The Cyber Devotee.

This employee might be engaged in anything from innocent cyber-dating to hard-hitting cyber-crime. Wherever they are on the spectrum, you need to know about them quickly and a professional team can help you. With the development of globally interconnected digital networks, a new era of cyber-espionage has also opened up, which government agencies in key economies find increasingly difficult to handle. A detailed and regular analysis of your company’s digital system can certainly minimise the damage that this sort of activity can cause.

The message therefore is, know your employees and know what they’re doing. That’s not always 100 per cent checkable, but you’ll be surprised how often it is. In a world of high frequency share trading and cloud computing, you may think the human element has been minimised or totally subsumed by technology. But that’s not the case. Experienced professional teams have spent years following the evolution of technology – which places them ahead of the game – and also the means by which human beings interact with it and find ways to exploit it. They can bring all of that to bear on your corporate operations to provide you with a picture of reality that may differ significantly – even dangerously – from what you’ve come to accept.

The climactic downpour in the UK, which included some 2,000 emails and 3,000 related documents, first appeared online on November 20, courtesy of an anonymous Russian server. While there’s nothing surprising about that, there is in the degree of spite that some of the communications display. One top man at the Climate Research Unit, based at the University of East Anglia, wrote in 2004 that he was “cheered” by the news that a prominent climate change sceptic in Australia had suddenly died of a heart attack. Another says he would like to meet his adversaries in a dark alley one night. Other experts refer to their colleagues in highly unflattering terms.

Scientists who support the theory of man-made climate change are lined up against their heretical opponents, each side armed to the teeth and ready to fight the War of Roses all over again. One rues the fact that his team can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment, which he sees as a travesty. He cites data published only a few months ago that shows that there should be even more warming. The data must surely be wrong, he suggests. The sceptics hurl missiles back, claiming that the emails are evidence of a conspiracy to bully into submission those who challenge the man-made hypothesis. With Copenhagen just around the corner, something is clearly rotten in the State of Denmark.

This is ugly business, but imagine it transposed to your company environment. Internal schisms over whether or not to proceed with a major corporate project could, if exposed, see your share price plummet. Confidence in your capacity to complete it successfully would be shattered. Picture too, a public dump with a strong dash of morality. The climate emails came with a hacker’s message saying, “We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence.”

This sort of predicament simply can’t be avoided by pleading with your company colleagues to feel more compassion for each other, or to use more temperate language. If you think it could happen to your firm, then call in a team of professionals without delay. They’ll undertake a forensic analysis of your company’s activities, screen your computer system and its databases and generally tighten up your whole operation. Make sure they have a proven track record in this sophisticated field. If they do, you’ll be able to sleep easy, free from Russian nightmares.