Competitive Betrayal

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

Weekend FiTi reports on "the enemy within" corporations
and the growth of "competitive intelligence" as cold war 
spy tactics are adapted to big business. Excerpts:

Nobody in the surveillance business really knows how 
much commercial spying goes on. A lot of the eavesdropping 
is done, perfectly legally, by managers listening in to their 
own staff.

It is, of course, in the interest of equipment suppliers and
corporate consultants to maximise the dangers that companies
face. "All companies are paranoid about their own security,"
said the spokesman of one well-known British multinational.
"They don't seem to mind paying consultants to tell them
things they know already."

Yet all agree that the field of "competitive intelligence",
as it is politely termed, is an expanding one. The
privatisation of whole economies, the deregulation of
monopoly markets, the globalisation of business, the spread
of foreign investment and contested takeovers, the
proliferation of technology and the sheer volume of
information - all have made companies more aggressive, and
more vulnerable.

A consultant called in to investigate a theft may find
himself pitted against another. In order to sanitise the
business, a professional association called the Society of
Competitive Intelligence Professionals has been set up.

Its 5,000 members are meant to follow a code which vaguely
urges them to obey the law, identify themselves when asking
questions, and avoid "unethical practices".
SCIP is influenced by the Association of Former Intelligence
Officers, a group described as "very powerful" by Andre
Pienaar, a young manager at the corporate investigators
Kroll Associates who has written a doctoral thesis on
business and intelligence.

"Company information has become very valuable," he said,
"more valuable than physical assets."

Protecting that information is becoming ever more difficult.
It is not just the tappers, buggers and hackers who are the
problem, however. The problem is the loyalty - or lack of it
- of employees in a world of short contracts, rapid turnover
and big inducements.

Tony McStravick, former acting head of the Metropolitan
police Fraud Squad in London, has worked for Kroll and is
now at Control Risks Group. "It all comes down to management
in the end," he said. "Companies have lost the hearts and
minds of their employees because of performance pay,
delayering, downsizing."

"You have to have a culture of honesty, from the top down.
You must find the balance between maximising profits and
being fair and honest. A lot of the time, companies forget
they are dealing with human beings."

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For full article:

   http://jya.com/tew.txt