Here is an interesting piece from InfoWorld:
Corporations are woefully unprepared to counter attempts at corporate espionage, say experts who perform vulnerability assessments designed to uncover security weaknesses. U.S. corporations lose as much as $300 billion a year to hacking, cracking, physical security breaches, and other criminal activity, according to Ira Winkler, author of “Spies Among Us” (Wiley, 2005) and president of the Internet Security Advisors Group, which performs espionage simulations and provides other services.
Although espionage is usually associated with high-tech approaches involving wireless security breaches and zombified PCs, low-tech tactics such as walking into a building are common, says Johnny Long, a security researcher at Computer Sciences Corp. and author of “No-Tech Hacking” (Syngress, 2008).
“To me, computers are irrelevant,” Winkler says. “It’s about what data do I want, what form does it take, and how can I steal it?”
Any company can be a target, says Peter Wood, chief of operations at First Base Technologies, a U.K.-based consultancy that performs ethical hacking services. Spies are interested in anything from financial data to intellectual property and customer data. They might steal information for blackmail purposes, but “the most common motive for physical intrusion is industrial espionage,” he says.
Here are several of the most common ploys and the countermeasures you can put into place to spot — and possibly even stop — the work of a spy.
