What is industrial espionage and how to prevent it from happening in your company?
In the face of high market competitiveness, industrial espionage is an illegal strategy used to obtain confidential, strategic, or proprietary information from a company.
Many companies choose to cheat and opt for industrial espionage as a way to gain an advantage over their competitors. This situation is well-represented in the children's universe with Plankton trying to steal the secret Krabby Patty recipe in the SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon.
Now, in a context where most information is available in the digital environment, industrial espionage is increasingly tied to cyber invasion strategies such as phishing attacks, use of false credentials, MITM attacks, and more.
In this article, you will understand in more detail what industrial espionage is and how to protect yourself against this type of attack. Happy reading!
What is industrial espionage?
Industrial espionage refers to the practice of obtaining confidential, strategic, or proprietary information from a company through illegal means, with the aim of benefiting a competing organization.
This crime may involve the collection of trade secrets, product plans, marketing strategies, patented technologies, and other sensitive information that can be used to gain a competitive market advantage.
Industrial espionage can occur through various means, including physical espionage, unauthorized access to computer systems, bribing employees, or using malware to steal information.
Types of industrial espionage
There are several types of industrial espionage, which can vary depending on the methods used and the goals of the invasion. Some of the main types include:
- Physical Espionage: Involves unauthorized access to the company's physical facilities, such as offices, factories, and laboratories, to obtain valuable information. This can include theft of documents, photographing prototypes, or installing listening devices.
- Cyber Espionage: Refers to the use of digital techniques and tools to invade a company's systems and access confidential information. Methods used include phishing, malware, password theft, or exploiting vulnerabilities in networks and systems.
- Employee Espionage: This type involves bribing, persuading, or coercing employees to obtain sensitive internal information. This can include recruiting key employees from a company or using threats and repression to obtain confidential information.
- Communication Interception: Similar to MITM attacks, this espionage technique involves intercepting electronic communications—such as intranet, emails, text messages, social media, video calls, etc.—or phone communications between companies, partners, or employees.
Why protect against industrial espionage?
No company wants its strategies and confidential information in the hands of competitors, right?
It may seem obvious, but protecting against industrial espionage is a way to ensure that market strategies, company positioning, differentiators, and the integrity of an entire organization remain secure.
Furthermore, industrial espionage can open gaps for data breaches beyond the company’s confidential information, including data from clients, partners, leads, and employees.
What actions should be taken to protect your company from industrial espionage?
Just like any other threat—cyber or not—that can affect the integrity of a business, prevention is always the best way to avoid cases of industrial espionage.
Here are six preventive actions that can help keep your company secure against such threats:
- Strengthen Company Culture: It's important that all employees, collaborators, or partners not only know the company's values but also believe in its purposes. Many cases of industrial espionage involve people from within the company, so it's crucial that everyone defends and protects the integrity of the business.
- Access Control: Know who enters and exits your company—both physically and digitally. It's essential to develop access control mechanisms to monitor and identify suspicious behaviors or unauthorized access.
- Network Monitoring: It's important to be aware of everything happening on your company's networks. Constant network monitoring helps identify suspicious activities, such as unauthorized data transfers or unusual user behaviors.
- Create a Cybersecurity Culture: Having employees and collaborators aware of privacy, data protection, and cybersecurity is always an advantage, especially in preventing industrial espionage. Investing in cybersecurity training and workshops encourages the monitoring of suspicious activities and good practices in the digital environment.
- Patent Products: This action is a tip to avoid the consequences of potential industrial espionage. One way to mitigate the risks of espionage and protect your intellectual assets is through patents and registrations—thus preventing plagiarism.
- Strengthen Your Systems: Having a robust security system is key to preventing industrial espionage, as it is the main barrier against cyber invasions.
To do this, vulnerabilities must be identified and corrected effectively. Bug Bounty programs are a way to identify gaps in systems of any size.
With a community of information security experts, Bug Bounty is one of the most current and effective cybersecurity trends on the market, as it analyzes the weak points of systems from end to end—acting like a true bug hunt.
Want to learn more about how Bug Bounty can help you avoid industrial espionage? Contact BugHunt!