Even if your business seems secure and above a hack, you can never be too careful. Looking at all the accounts of corporate espionage, it is clear how wide spread and common this phenomenon is.
It may seem like a silly reason to steal a company’s information, but corporate espionage by an upset employee happens more often than you think.
CORPORATE ESPIONAGE EXAMPLES TRIAL
He was sentenced to 27 months in prison for the theft of trade secrets and at his trial explained his motivation for stealing the documents was anger at his supervisor. Way back in 1997, an engineer working for Gillette faxed and emailed confidential documents to the company’s competitors. The next story demonstrates how most acts of corporate espionage are done by an angry employee, not an actual spy. Procter & Gamble (P&G) was also caught dumpster diving for Unilever’s documents in 2001 even though it is doubtful the hair-care company would just toss its most important documents in the dumpster. To this day, the chief executive still has no regrets about his blatant and farcical corporate espionage attempt against his rival competitor. However, the detective agency he hired made headlines when they were caught trying to buy trash from cleaning ladies working at a research group backed by Microsoft. In 2000, the chief executive of Oracle decided to hire a private investigator to look into organizations that supported Microsoft. Let’s take a look at some more true stories of corporate espionage. The point is, if a company like Google or BP can fall victim to corporate espionage, what’s stopping your business from being a victim as well? Top secret topographical maps and other proprietary information was stolen costing them millions of dollars. Ginormous oil companies in Europe and the United States, such as Exxon Mobile and BP, were hacked in 2009.
In early 2010, China launched a cyberattack against the company to steal their intellectual property. Huge corporations like Google are not even immune to industrial espionage. There are countless stories of businesses of all sizes being hit by corporate espionage. Unfortunately, corporate espionage has only grown since the days of Père d’Entrecolles. To be more specific, it is the theft of trade secrets by removing, copying, or recording the confidential information of a business for use by another company. Industrial espionage, to give a broad definition, is any operation or act conducted by one company to gain a competitive advantage over another. Corporate espionage has been around for centuries and though its methods have changed through the years, it is not going away anytime soon. Père d’Entrecolles may have been one of the first industrial spies. In the early 1700’s, a French missionary left for China and returned to Europe with the secret techniques the Chinese used to produce porcelain.
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