Corporate Espionage

Espionage can be defined as the act of getting or obtaining confidential or secret
information without the accrued permission from the individual who owns or holds the
information. Espionage is mainly done by governments and big corporation to gain political
advantage over their rivals. There many types and categories of espionage but the focus will
be corporate espionage. Corporate espionage is a practice where espionage techniques and
approaches are implemented with the objective of gaining financial advantage.
There are several ways in which corporate espionage can be conducted based on the
intention of the perpetrator. For instance, an individual can trespass onto competitors’
property and gain access to their property without permission. Also, an individual can pose as
an employee of the competitor with the intention of learning the secrets of the company and
use it to gain competitive advantage (Dunn, 2018). A spy can also wiretap a competitor to
gain access to their conversion.
Notably, the use of computers and internet is one of the commonly used approaches to
commit corporate espionage. The central reason why the computers have become key in
corporate espionage is due to the large amount of information that they hold and the ease in
which it can be accessed and copied. Espionage perpetrators have devised many approaches
to stealing information from computers. In particular, the rise of the use of internet has
provided a new channel for corporate espionage as it- has increased the range of information
that can be accessed (Frost, 2018). Globally, more than 50,000 companies report corporate
espionage everyday most of which are enabled by the use of internet which gives the
perpetrators a path to access corporate information. This kind of attacks are called
cyberattacks, and they are said to be increasing at worrying rate every year. Notably, the
current use of the internet has elevated the opportunities for sabotage and corporate

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espionage. The increase of corporate espionage has become a central area of concern for
many governments as the vice extends to issues that threaten national security such as
terrorism.
Various ways can be applied in preventing corporate espionage, especially which
result from computers and internet. One of the approaches is end-to-end network protection
which involves protection of data in transit. The process of data transfer should be secure,
and the individual who accesses the information must be authenticated by using of strong
authentication mechanism. Another approach is ensuring that intermediate data storage is
secure. Notably, sensitive intermediary information should not be stored in insecure network
such as outsourced site, company DMZ and the internet (Williams, 2016). Encryption of data
is also essential in preventing espionage, but it might not be able to protect the data from
intentional modification or deletion. In this regard, it is essential for companies to have a
single data access channel to the storage location and develop strict protocols of data access
to avoid remote access. Companies should also ensure process integrity of the data protection
approaches to facilitate accountability of the processes.
Conclusion

Inclusion, it is evident that corporate espionage is on the rise, and it estimated to
double every year. Based on this information it is essential for corporation to evaluate their
degree of vulnerability to sabotage and espionage and take the necessary measure. The
government should also be actively involved in capturing and prosecuting the espionage
perpetrators as they have the potential of affecting the progress of a country.

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References

Dunn, P. (2018, July). Deloitte and the Ethics of Corporate Espionage. In Proceedings of the
International Association for Business and Society (Vol. 29, pp. 65-70).
Frost, J. (2018, April). Dealing with the risk of organizational espionage. In Proceedings of
the Fifth Cybersecurity Symposium (p. 10). ACM.
Williams, K. Y. (2016). Insider-Threat Detection in Corporate Espionage and Cyber-
Espionage. In National Security and Counterintelligence in the Era of Cyber
Espionage (pp. 62-77). IGI Global.