Corporate Espionage: A Real Threat

Corporate espionage does more to damage business than any other security intrusion, yet U.S. businesses do little to protect themselves. A smart CIO, armed with the latest technologies, can be the best line of defense. Believe it or not, the odds are that trusted employees in your company are right now stealing your product designs, business models, marketing plans, research and development files, and other intellectual property. Just ask the executives at Avery Dennison, Eastman Kodak, Gillette, Joy Mining Machinery, PPG, and many other companies – large and small – that have lost thousands of research hours and millions of dollars through corporate and industrial espionage. Also known as economic espionage, this is an issue within the IT security market that’s often overlooked in favor of more newsworthy and sometimes less-complex events, such as malicious computer viruses or network hacks. Yet carefully planned economic espionage does more to damage business than any other security intrusion. Despite numerous government and private-sector studies that warned of the growing threat of economic espionage, most American business executives haven’t felt any sense of urgency to take action, and few companies have taken protective measures. Full Story