Category: Espionage

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Having a Confidential Information Policy

This is a good article from Lexology.  With corporate espionage and employment theft on the increase, having a confidential information policy in place may not be the ultimate security guarantee, but it does help.
Tips on What Your Confidential Information Policies Must Have
Lexology (08/01/14) Machum, G. Grant; Strachan, Alison

Employers need policies in place to ensure private and confidential information stays that way. These policies must have clear definitions of “confidential” and “private” information, which should be tailored to their particular business, and the policy must be communicated to all employees, with meetings and training sessions held to ensure employees read over the policy and ask any questions they might have. The policy also should detail the consequences of a breach and require employees to return all company property upon termination, and employees should understand they have obligations to protect this information even after their employment ends. Taking these steps ensures that employers have the documentation needed to protect their business in the event that confidential information is disclosed.

For the full article click on this link.

 

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As Corporate Espionage Increases, Man is Sentenced to Fifteen Years in Prison

Corporate espionage is on the upswing.  Since the Great Recession and the economic downturn, either desperate employees or conniving employees have resorted to stealing trade secrets and proprietary information.  We at Corra Group know of at least one company that was seriously damaged by an employee stealing one of their most valued trade secrets and selling it to a foreign company.

Once upon a time there was more loyalty between entity and employee.  For the most part, that seems to be long gone along with the twenty year stints at one company at the gold watch at retirement.  Today it is essential to conduct background checks on all employment candidates, but it is also wise to conduct ongoing background checks to be sure they have not gotten into the kind of trouble that would cause them to steal.  Remember, we are not talking about a few paper clips and notepads anymore.  We are talking about the theft of information that could cause serious damage to your company.

Here is an excerpt of the article from the Wall Street Journal.

California chemical engineer Walter Liew has been sentenced to 15 years in prison and fined $28.3 million for economic espionage. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White said Thursday that Liew had “turned against his adopted country over greed” when he sold Chinese government-controlled companies DuPont’s secret recipe for the white pigment titanium dioxide. Liew received $28 million from those companies in exchange for the recipe. Aside from the $28.3 million, the engineering company launched by Liew and his wife was fined $18.9 million. Two former DuPont engineers have already been convicted of economic espionage for their involvement in the case. The Liews are believed to have hired those engineers and paid them thousands of dollars to steal documents related to the manufacturing process for titanium dioxide.

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The Possible Danger of Indebted Government Workers

In order to work on the more sensitive government projects one must pass a background check.  Often, part of that background check consists of an employment credit check.  Workers who are in arrears for more than $5,000 are typically considered ineligible to work on the project.   Common belief is that is someone is indebted he is more susceptible to employee theft or corporate espionage.  The more sensitive the project the more likely that indebted contractor could be exposed to coercion or persuasion.

 

The Hill writes that about 83 thousand government workers who were cleared for security projects had an aggregate tax debt  of nearly three-Fourths of a billion dollars.  The figure listed i $730 Million.  Five thousand of these employees had liens against their houses.  I would imagine part of this debt is attributable to the economic downturn or Great Recession as it has come to be known.  More than a few homeowners are still underwater after their houses inflated in valuable then dropped dramatically.

 

According to the article…”
The GAO first recommended in 2013 mechanisms to improve federal agencies’ ability to detect delinquent federal tax debts by those eligible for security clearances. 

However, statutory privacy protections limited access to this information, the GAO said. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) had formed an interagency working group to explore creating an automated process similar to what the Treasury Department uses. 

In June, the ODNI’s working group said due to the legal and logistical challenges of obtaining tax compliance information from Treasury, it was exploring other sources of information.”

Read more: http://thehill.com/policy/defense/213497-report-dod-workers-with-access-to-secret-files-owe-730m-in-back-taxes#ixzz39RJNDorY

 

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Chinese military Unit Charged withCcyber-Espionage against U.S. Firms

Interesting headline about Chinese Cyber Spying.  I wrote about this in my novel, The Guys Who Spied for China.  The novel was a quarter finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards.   The book was a roman a clef, detailing Chinese Espionage Networks operating in the United States.

Now here we are again.

According to the article in the Washington Post…

“The Justice Department has indicted five members of the Chinese military on charges of hacking into computers and stealing valuable trade secrets from leading steel, nuclear plant and solar power firms, marking the first time that the United States has leveled such criminal charges against a foreign country.

The landmark case paves the way for more indictments and demonstrates that the United States is serious about holding foreign governments accountable for crimes committed in cyberspace, officials said at a news conference Monday.”