Exactly what is corporate espionage?
It goes by several names: industrial espionage, economic espionage, corporate spying—all these terms refer to corporate entities that deploy intelligence protocols, both legal and illegal, to give themselves a market advantage. These coordinated intelligence campaigns come from large-scale entities like China, along with your average industry rival simply looking to get ahead.
From 2018, corporate espionage has inflicted 69 billion euros worth of economic damage resulting in massive job loss across Europe that is expected to total one million by 2025.
Corporate espionage agents hide behind their computer screens, making it almost impossible to identify who is behind a particular data breach or piece of ransomware. The untraceable nature makes the practice all the more common, while crypto technologies and complicated geopolitics will only serve to increase corporate espionage during the coming decades.
What’s being done about it?
The reality is, only you can prevent corporate espionage. Companies think that tight cybersecurity is their best defense and, indeed, data encryption, log monitoring, and robust network intrusion tools are essential. But these resources must work in combination with a counterintelligence mindset that accounts for the human element of corporate espionage. The world’s strongest cybersecurity system will not stop an employee from opening an innocent-seeming email on their work computer or carrying out sensitive documents as part of their “work from home” pile. That’s why developing purposeful counterintelligence initiatives is the only way for companies to ascend and survive in a cutthroat corporate landscape.
What does Bjorn Beam provide?
I leverage the best CIA counterintelligence practices paired with a view of the sociological, psychological, historical, and digital factors that influence nefarious behavior. I can craft a completely custom market solution that gives you the insights and protections you need to excel securely and focus on defensive human solutions tailored to your unique industry, the structure of your business, and the current intelligence climate.
