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Industrial Espionage: How Well Prepared You Are?

Industrial espionage is the illegal and unethical theft of business trade secrets for use by a competitor to achieve a competitive advantage. It is often done by an insider or an employee who gains employment for the express purpose of spying and stealing information for a competitor.

Industrial espionage embraces illegal and unethical methods of collecting corporate data. It involves stealing intellectual property and trade secrets to use them for a competitive advantage. It comes from various routes:

Cyberattack: This is one of the most common and well-known terms everyone is familiar with. However, hackers can gain access to your sensitive data using espionage software or malware to exploit vulnerabilities. The majority of companies have up-to-date malware protection and network security, however, many companies don’t have a cyber espionage prevention strategy in place.
Insider Threat:
In acts of industrial espionage between companies, malicious insiders are used much more frequently. Competitors can plant moles inside your company that act as regular employees while secretly gathering intelligence for their actual employer. Competitors can approach trusted employees who have privileged access, asking them to trade secrets and other valuable information and offering them money or blackmailing them into cooperation. The malicious activity of such employees is much harder to detect than hacking attacks, making it a much safer bet. Various social engineering techniques can be used to gather secret information or extract credentials from employees.
Student Exchange Programmes:
A huge array of student exchanges and international placements are now offered at universities worldwide. The student exchange schemes have become very popular in the last 15 years or so, with more and more students taking the opportunity to study abroad as part of their student exchange programmes are being targeted by domestic spies who use money, love and friendship to extract information. We have noticed a few cases of foreign students spying for their country. These students are either studying full-time or are under student exchange programmes. They are given specific tasks of gathering sensitive information about their target while studying. These students are often found at unwanted places doing suspicious activities. They also recruit local spies so that the constant flow of information remains even after the departure of a student. Monitoring research collaboration in universities and the export of academic data that can be used for military purposes in China, in particular, is becoming increasingly important for the governments. Protecting India’s national interests is becoming important in a changing environment. India must be more vigilant of the security threat posed by neighbouring countries. India also must oversee cases of suspected leaking of intellectual property to a foreign country as a consequence of foreign funding.
Tourists:
A lot of foreign tourists have acted as spy agents to carry out espionage activities or are trapped or befriended by a local guide to perform certain tasks in the lure of money.

Business visitors:

Many organizations in disguise of due diligence for potential partnership or M&A carry out espionage activities and target company would not even realize that they are the victim. In such circumstances, the company can visit your manufacturing plants to check the quality of the products manufactured, they can scan through QC reports etc. The target will oblige to provide all such requests as focus on the probable business partnership.
 
How to protect your organization? Well, just create awareness amongst all your employees, conduct frequent training, do mock tests and be vigilant to avoid unwanted surprises!