Corporate espionage can take on two different paths. One is intelligence and involves the theft of proprietary information or intellectual property theft. Another aspect is through the efforts of an agent provocateur to interrupt the workflow. An agent provocateur is obviously French and means an ‘inciting agent’. It is a person who commits or who acts to entice another person to commit illegal or rash acts or falsely implicate them in partaking of an illegal act to ruin the reputation or entice legal action against the target or group. Take the actions of a competitor to bring down a company through an agent working covertly to stir up employee or union squabbles or strikes disrupting workflow and production. Or the agent may encourage a disgruntled employ to aid in theft of corporate data and information.
Counterintelligence & Protection of Corporate Secrets
As we use the term ‘corporate’ we mean any business organization, not just corporations. All businesses subject to organized infiltration by professionals representing other businesses to gather your secrets, and these professionals are working undercover and covertly to accomplish the theft or disruption. Corporate security is most like the logical source for counterintelligence and protection of corporate secrets. There are many former military intelligence personal that would be a good fit in the security/intel and counter intel operations of the corporation. They know how enemy professionals work and can be a direct correlation of what the learned in the military and applied to the business world. Of course, the professionals working against you maybe disgraced former operatives themselves.
Disgruntled or Dissatisfied Employee
Everything from customer lists to the specs on the companies last whiz-bang gadget are open to theft. One of the best avenues is through a disgruntled or dissatisfied employee who in their heightened emotion state are vulnerable to suggestion and are clearly the best chance of an agent provocateur to enlist the aid of an insider. The higher up the corporate hierarchy the more valuable the contact. A company’s worst nightmare is to find out that a key corporate officer or manager has turned against the company. Embezzlement, theft of goods and fraud are more common than many people are willing to admit to. Not even an owner is above scrutiny.
Corporate Espionage Investigations
A company can conduct ethical intelligence gathering, most open source (internet, news feeds/papers, etc.) and be entirely in the right. Crossing boundaries by infiltrating an undercover operative or disrupting the business flow has crossed all ethical and legal boundaries. You can even conduct informal interviews during lunch times, but no deep penetration undercover operations. Suspect a rival of conducting unethical or illegal operations you then have a private investigator look into it. This creates a line of separation between parties and there is nothing wrong in inserting an undercover operative into your own organization to uncover any indications of any operations being mounted in your direction. When it comes to corporate or international espionage and intelligence operations, both nations and individual struggle in setting ethical boundaries. Most private investigators have a good feel between right and wrong and are ethical in conducting their investigation. The caveat is most. You may want to define the boundaries in your contract, with a provision that you are notified for any variance in the investigation and for your approval. You are or can be held responsible for the actions of a private investigator’s actions under your employ.
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You do have the right to protect yourself and take proactive measures to do so call an ethical professional.
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