Intelligence Monthly

  Artikel verfasst am 10. August 2023

Sensitive information should be protected from being shared

Many players are interested in an actor’s sensitive if not confidential information. In a nutshell, Protective Intelligence is a process to develop and execute measures to counter intelligence gathering threats, to understand intelligence gathering activities, and to protect critical success factors from discovery. This includes setting up and executing sophisticated monitoring programs to acquire insights on adversaries’ intelligence gathering efforts.

Competitors and state actors are typically the main concern. Competitors can use intelligence, legally and ethically gathered by Offensive Intelligence, to inflict serious damage to a company’s business success. But other threats are to be considered as well: for example head hunters that penetrate companies to identify staff that can be lured away, activists looking for information that can be used to damage the company, journalists looking for a headline fed by information obtained from internal sources, consultants on the hunt for information they can use, and investment analysts. Finally, state actors seek to obtain confidential information for Industrial Espionage. Nevertheless, some tactics used in Industrial Espionage such as recruiting insiders, Social Engineering and OSINT build on publicly available information on companies.

Economic espionage is a real threat to the corporate world, and so is competitive intelligence. Operations security (OpSec) has caught the attention of executives, but it does not provide adequate protection. A precisely designed protective intelligence effort builds on existing OpSec and risk management policies and protects strategies, intellectual property, investments, and business outcomes in a sustainable manner. INFO + DATEN is experienced in setting up appropriate protective intelligence measures to reduce exposure to intelligence gathering activities of adversaries and other parties.