The Increased Risk of Corporate Espionage

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has initiated a new campaign to thwart the increased use of  industrial espionage.   According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal ,  the new campaign will focus on the prevention of  corporate espionage.   The FBI will feature billboards in nine cities, pronouncing, “Protect America’s Trad Secrets.”

As many businesses can tell you, corporate espionage has been on the increase during the last few years.   From a strategic viewpoint, among the more unscrupulous companies, there is greater benefit in stealing another company’s trade secrets than conducting the costly and time consuming research and development on their own.

There is few things worse as is the case with one company that approached Corra Group, where they discovered certain trade secrets that put them at the top of their industrial sector had been compromised through industrial espionage.  As with a good many cases, the theft of proprietary information came from within the company.   Other methods are through hacking into the computer systems, planting a mole, or just plain old burglary.  Despite what is depicted in glitzy Hollywood movies, sometimes breaking into a business is neither as high tech or as difficult as the film would make it out to be.    And, of course,  a good many industries, as headlines prove over and over, have relatively insecure security systems that allow for hacking, data theft and cyber invasions that could seriously compromise the new technology or physical product.

For the complete article click on this link on HR.Toolbox