Friday, May 8, 2009

Spy passion

In trying to ferret out secret information about competitors in the theft of trade secrets and «know-how», observed the conduct of unfair competition, many large corporations. The only difference is the methods they use.

Leakage in favor of competitors
Industrial espionage has become in recent years a real disaster for companies of any level. It affects everything: the public and private enterprises, large corporations and small companies. After the «cold war», hundreds of professional scouts were left without work, but many of them found a new use - have to extract economic and scientific and technical information. The demand, as is known, gives rise to the proposal. In today's world, information is valuable not only higher, but rapidly became obsolete. In this situation, investors became economically profitable to invest in itself is not innovation, and infrastructure for the extraction of information about it. The result is industrial espionage has become regarded as a normal business, not too different from trade in computers, or food.

The cost of industrial espionage is enormous: according to experts, the annual loss of German entrepreneurs ranging from 8 to 70 billion euros, while in the U.S. and is reaching astronomical figures - more than $ 150 billion According to experts, 42% of large European companies already have been victims of spying .

Victims will learn about the leak of classified information is usually too late: their competitors are suddenly beginning to overtake. However, most companies prefer to hide the fact that a victim of industrial espionage. They are afraid to jeopardize their reputation, discourage customers and losing jobs. In most cases, the facts of espionage is not registered as employees of companies simply do not notice the leakage of information.

Many managers often do not protect their information, as spending on unnecessary security. Frivolousness This can lead not only to financial losses, but to bankrupt the company. No successful company did not even survive for more than a week, if 20% of its business information will become available to competitors.

Shake the dust from the soles
The greatest interest to spies represent industries such as aerospace and biotechnology, telecommunications, computer technology and software, modern transportation systems, advanced structural materials and coatings, energy development, production of semiconductors, machinery, chemistry and pharmacy.

Competitors start up proven means: bribery, persuasion, compromising, harassment, eavesdropping, interception. They collect dust from the soles of staff in an effort to identify the elements used in production, sift debris in the hope of finding something worthwhile. The latter means resorted corporation Procter and Gamble - the manufacturer of shampoos. Agents P & G studied the contents of garbage cans corporation Unilever, to obtain information about the new competitor's product.

Grave danger laid-off employees who do not miss event «nasolit» their former employers and sell information to competitors. For example, a former engineer of Intel, to work at Sun Microsystems, gave the secrets of the processor Itanium, for which paid, sat down in prison. A former Transmeta employees last year were going to sell the information pertaining to promising developments in the field of microprocessors for personal computers.

Most loud scandal broke out last July, when the industrial espionage has got the largest aerospace corporation Boeing. This «espionage» history goes back to the late 90's, when the United States Air Force, conducted a tender for the development of a launch of military satellites, Boeing announced the winner. The company has received 19 of the 28 included in the tender contract, and their main competitor Lockheed Martin won only nine. But the leaders Lockheed, and the Ministry of Justice had reason to suspect the winner in the unfair game. As it turned out later, back in the mid 90-ies of the Lockheed engineer, Kenneth Branch, who worked on the project while the installation on the launch of missiles, has received a proposal from Boeing employee to provide information on the project in exchange for a lucrative job in the future. The engineer did not resist the temptation, and ultimately Boeing received tender. For the offense, as is known, should be punished. The fact that industrial espionage was established in the course of the investigation undertaken by both the Ministry of Justice and the Pentagon, followed by the U.S. Air Force abandoned the previously signed contracts with Boeing worth $ 1 billion and handed them over to the «victim» - the company Lockheed Martin.

State structures, by the way, also reoriented the work of its special services for the extraction of information. Thus, the Agency for National Security (National Security Agency, NSA), established in the United States during the «cold war», currently engaged in electronic interception and listening to information transmitted via satellite communication: telephone calls, telexes, faxes, e-mail. For this reason the system «Echelon», which tracks international data flows. This is a giant vacuum cleaner, sucking information. European countries have already realized the danger of this system, which at any moment can be used to the detriment of the economy of a continent.



Ludmila Nedomolkina

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