Archive for the ‘Corporate Espionage’ Category
Open Versus Closed Systems
“The principal characteristic of twenty-first-century international relations is turning out to be nonpolarity: a world dominated not by one or two or even several states but rather by dozens of actors possessing and exercising various kinds of power. This represents a tectonic shift from the past.”
“Today’s world differs in a fundamental way from one of classic multipolarity: there are many more power centers, and quite a few of these poles are not nation-states. Indeed, one of the cardinal features of the contemporary international system is that nation-states have lost their monopoly on power and in some domains their preeminence as well.”
-Richard Hass, Head of the Council on Foreign Relations and former head of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State, writing in 2008.
Google’s rise over the past ten years has coincided with and arguably assisted in the creation of extra-state entities, which can project enormous power globally. The equation can be simplistically stated: in an information economy, control of information equates to raw power. The Industrial Revolution fueled the British Empire, control of markets fueled the American Empire, control of information is fueling the Google empire. In the space of ten years, the Internet has gone from supporting pets.com to being the pre-eminent vehicle for projecting power. However, the continuation of the open Eco-system of information, innovation and development, which has provided the platform for this success is not assured (as has been highlighted by a variety of Internet scholars and strategic thinkers). Open systems are messy, and therefore, closed wall Internet systems may grow in popularity as consumers seek protection from some of the anarchy that reigns online. This scenario is not new. The United States is the original messy open political system and by managing to control this method of organizing society it became a super-power. China offers an alternative: a closed wall system to protect its citizens from the anarchy of open society. Google has been the champion of the open Internet. Just as American exceptionalism has driven the United States to intervene globally to uphold Jeffersonian values, Google intervenes in FCC auctions to ensure the open access to information. Of course the commercial imperative cannot be denied – the United States has financially benefited from promoting the market state, and Google financially benefits wherever there is an open (uncensored) Internet. It has been unclear whether Google would ever seek alliances with nation-states given its extra-territorial virtual nature, but that time appears to have arrived. Read the rest of this entry »
Threat Of Corporate Espionage
Written March 16th 2007
This piece clearly pre-dates Eamon Javers book on the private intelligence business – Broker, Trader, Lawyer Spy. As a past employee of one of the firms Javers highlights, BIA I can attest to his accuracy. The book is an important addition to the limited material available regarding competitive intelligence.
Corporate espionage is as old as the industrial revolution, but with the rise of an information led economy the theft of Intellectual Property (IP) has increased in-step with this trend. As well as facing a threat from industry competitors –corporations face a renewed threat from foreign intelligence agencies and a new breed of ‘competitive intelligence’ firms who use espionage techniques to acquire sensitive information. According to the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, in the United States over six million dollars worth of surveillance devices are sold to the public each day. A number of studies from 2005 led by the noted expert Professor Hedieh Nasheri (Economic Espionage and Industrial Spying) link the themes of technological advance and increased economic information theft. Clearly there is a growing concern regarding the security of sensitive corporate information. However, it should be clearly noted that security regimes in place at the majority of companies are sufficient to counter this threat with relatively small additions from outside experts. This paper seeks to highlight the types of groups engaged in corporate espionage, the techniques they use and mitigation strategies that may be employed to reduce the risk of critical information loss. The information contained in this paper is based on open sources and therefore, is necessarily not a complete picture of the situation as most public companies are understandably reticent to reveal their relationship with corporate espionage.
