Recent Corporate Spying

Here in Canada, and specifically Ottawa, two events serve well to warn off the public sector about the effects of corporate espionage, and to hammer home the concept that corporate espionage does in fact occur on the large scale, and the work can often be split between public and private bodies to execute.

The first report came from the Department of National Defence report leaking out indicating that there were concerns over the potential presence of eavesdropping devices on the former Nortel campus. While it is amazing that a defence security/intelligence organization failed to consider this before dropping a cool billion on a real estate transaction, the real bit goes to show that while Ottawa is only an average sized city globally, it is a hub of hi-tech business, and as such has a heavy amount of corporate espionage. That the Nortel campus had been bugged is not so new, but knowing the extent of the penetration is really an interesting story on the capabilities and the devastating effects of corporate espionage, as this was one of the main factors contributing to the downfall of the former tech giant.

The other story is the Communications Security Establishment of Canada getting its hand caught in the Brazilian mining cookie jar after further Snowden leaks revealed the Canadian spy agency was prying into mining and energy sector information from Brazil. Again, this should not (I hope) be news, as many advanced countries take part in healthy spying campaigns, even on their allies. This means that France spies on the US, we spy on the Brazilians and the Americans spy on the Germans. It is normal business. However there exists a belief, particularly in newer companies, that the first world and allied countries are super duper friendly and would never seek to advance their own corporate capabilities and R&D. This is naïve and all corporations should make sure they incorporate at least some thought towards how they manage their info and counter-measures to mitigate the damage which can occur in the face of international corporate espionage.

Blog post is courtesy Elemental Investigations: Private Investigator Edmonton, an Edmonton, Canada based private investigator agency. They can be found online at www.elementalpi.ca