Tag Archive for 'Industrial Espionage'

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Industrial Espionage in History II

Published on April 4, 2008 in Competitive Intelligence and Industrial Espionage. 0 Comments Tags: , .

As in other forms of espionage, people usually act against their country’s interests, or that of their employer’s, for a combination of financial gain and ideology. During the Industrial Revolution era, European governments paid people to set-up businesses, but some made the move due to sentiment.

John Holker, a disaffected Jacobite, was recruited by France and became a manufacturer of textile machinery.

Michael Alcock was an interesting case. He moved to France to avoid embezzlement charges along with his mistress, leaving his wife and business partner to face bankruptcy. However, it turns out that his wife was part of the highly profitable scheme. She rejoined him, whereupon they lived ménage à trois on the upper Loire River where Alcock ran a forge and manufactured hardware.

Industrial Espionage in History

Published on March 30, 2008 in Competitive Intelligence and Industrial Espionage. 0 Comments Tags: , .

From 1718 to 1720 France launched a systematic effort to recruit English woolens workers, glass makers, clock and watch makers, ship wrights, and especially metallurgists. The recruiter encountered a characteristic of British industry: the division of labour. Workers only knew their own small portion of the process. This made the task too costly and inefficient. It’s easy to call the this industrial espionage due to the predatory “hiring away” by France, but the next two are not such clear-cut examples of industrial espionage.

In 1764 and 1765 the French monarch dispatched Gabriel-Jean Jars to visit English mines, smelters, and foundries. Amazingly, he was well received. His reports are used today by historians for the detailed descriptions of the industrial techniques he witnessed.

Insensible to international competition, the British Board of Longitude allowed French visitors to examine the revolutionary marine clocks of John Harrison in 1769. Harrison, quite rightly, flew into a rage when he learned of this.

Competitive Intelligence or Industrial Espionage?

These last two examples raise the question, is it industrial espionage if you knowingly give the data to the competition when they openly ask for it? Were the last two models for early competitive intelligence?

This isn’t Competitive Intelligence

Published on March 24, 2008 in Competitive Intelligence, Dirty Tricks and Industrial Espionage. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

An interesting post on B2B Sales Pipline:

Adam…asked a pricing question about an application component that could not be purchased alone…

…this question doesn’t pass the “Smell Test”…

Called him anyway…Cell Phone, with no company name provided…

…search Adam’s name in LinkedIn. Lo and behold – Adam works for a competitor. I called the competitors office, asked for Adam, and let him know that I would love to chat with him, since it’s always good for competitors to get to know each other. At the time of this posting, Adam has not called me back, and has likely joined the witness protection program.

This kind of amateurish nonsense passes for Competitive Intelligence far too often.

Travelling with Electronic Devices

Published on March 19, 2008 in Canada, Industrial Espionage, Intellectual Property Rights, Intelligence Services, Privacy, Private Investigator, Security and The Investigator's Computer. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

When I travel for work, I undertake what some people consider extreme measures to protect proprietary client data from theft by officials at international borders. These officials do not need warrants to seize or examine anything in your possession when crossing a border and that makes border officials excellent spies. This issue arose recently regarding the actions of the US border officials:

In Canada, one law firm has instructed its lawyers to travel to the United States with “blank laptops” whose hard drives contain no data. “We just access our information through the Internet,” said Lou Brzezinski, a partner at Blaney McMurtry, a major Toronto law firm. That approach also holds risks, but “those are hacking risks as opposed to search risks,” he said.

Creating a “blank laptop” entails more than just hitting the delete key or even using a utility to overwrite existing data. The hacking risk is also greater than most people realize, especially with wireless connections. Even with secure end-to-end encryption, traffic analysis can yield very useful intelligence.

Early Industrial Espionage

Published on February 12, 2008 in Industrial Espionage. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Industrial espionage is not a new. Most industrial countries have been doing it, in one form or another, since before the Industrial Revolution.

In the 14th century, the Italians devised a machine to make silk thread. This allowed them to dominate the silk thread market until about 1670 when first French, then Dutch spies, discovered the secret of the process and machinery.

The industrial espionage of England’s Thomas Lombe paid-off in 1716. Eventually Lombe’s silk thread factory employed hundreds, preceding the Industrial Revolution by about 50 years. Silk was not a mass market good and therefore the silk thread factories did not spark the Industrial Revolution. It took the wool and cotton factories to do that.

CI and Industrial Espionage

Published on February 11, 2008 in Competitive Intelligence, Industrial Espionage and News Media. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

In an article entitled, Cyberterrorism, Inc., we see the usual link between CI and industrial espionage as if the two are the same. Creating a link between the two is the work of feeble minds.

To gain an advantage over competitors, many corporations are hiring ex-military and government agents trained in the art of intelligence gathering techniques, according to a report from the SANS Institute, a Washington-based cybersecurity training organization.

These individuals are used to head new company divisions whose mission is to spy on competitors and obtain intelligence. Companies spend over US$2 billion annually to spy on each other, according to the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals.

In 1999, North American companies lost more than US$45 billion to theft of trade secrets and other valuable corporate data, according to the SANS report. “Today’s total losses are anyone’s guess,” the report continued.

CI is the act of creating Intelligence from open source data. Industrial espionage, on the other hand, usually involves the commission of criminal offences. I suspose the distinction is too complex for so-called journalists.

Dangers of Outsourced Software Development

Published on February 1, 2008 in Competitive Intelligence, Espionage, Intellectual Property Rights, Intelligence Services, Security and Surveillance. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Nigel Stanley, at Bloor Research article entitled Ounce Labs weighs into rogue code about the dangers of outsourcing software development. The most interesting part of the article follows:

Industrial espionage, or good old fashioned spying, is as alive and well today as it has ever been. In fact, a lot of time and effort from the security agencies is tied up in dealing with this issue, and contacts have assured me it is worse now than it has ever been as developing countries try to steal a march (maybe even literally) against the developed world. Spying between developed nations is also a problem, with some larger European countries having a dreadful reputation for trying to obtain industrial secrets from so called allies. Software development is an obvious target…

The downside of this approach is that decision makers get seduced by green lights whilst their developers look for even more creative ways of inserting malicious code. No sensible person will ever declare that a product such as Ounce 5 will guarantee that your code is 100% secure…

Industrial Espionage by China

Published on December 16, 2007 in Espionage and Industrial Espionage. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

South Korea – Concerns have re-emerged over the illegal transfer of high technology abroad, which has been worsening in recent years, in the wake of the latest leak case in which industrial spies handed over key automobile building technology of Hyundai Motor to Chinese firms.

Prosecutors Friday arrested two Hyundai Motor employees, who stole core technology for the automatic transmission of a sports utility vehicle (SUV) that the carmaker has developed with an investment of 300 billion won ($323 million) for two years, to a Chinese carmaker….

Samsung Electronics, for example, has already adopted an advanced security system in its Digital Media Research Center, where each researcher’s location can be traced through satellite-recognized identification cards, in addition to anti-eavesdropping devices.