It is well known that competitors, on the one hand, and foreign intelligence services, on the other, attach considerable importance to the investigation of trade secrets.
Not without reason Competitive Intelligence is well on the way to establish as an acknowledged management branch. The cases of economic and industrial espionage that are registered in statistics speak for themselves anyway.
The loss of sensitive information can have considerable consequences for companies, and can, now and then, even be a danger to their existences.
From the point of the “victims” it plays a subordinate part if the investigation is done by legal or illegal means. Crucial for them is that a grave competitive disadvantage can happen.
Counterintelligence deals with the defence of respective dangers. It names the rules and processes that shall help to shield business critical information effectively and lastingly from unintentional access of third persons.
If you want to limit risks you must know that information security gaps often are rooted in human communication – and that classical security concepts with their formal, hardware respectively software restrictions do not guarantee sufficient protection. It is precisely for this reason that competing companies and foreign government authorities often work systematically with comparatively simple and elegant methods of the so-called “Social Engineering” by using special “Elicitation Techniques”.
The ruling security paradigm is limited, because only technical and organisational-personal reactions to violations are not enough, but above all should be dealt with pedagogically, too.
Therefore CONFIDENT chooses a dualistic approach as regards Counterintelligence. In our prevention concepts conventional risk analyses and security audits play a role just as well as developing non-disclosure agreements, establishing communication guidelines, or special training and sensitizing of personnel.
