TX - Jim Damman thought somebody was looking over his shoulder for months. Little did he know that his office was routinely broken into and more than 150-million dollars worth of trade secrets were stolen without a visible trace according to a federal lawsuit. The President of Exel Transportation Services says his suspicion grew so strong that he took the unusual step of sweeping the company's Addison offices for electronic bugs.
Exel is not a business typically considered a target of corporate spying. It's a shipping broker. Inside its offices, logistic agents sit in front of computer terminals with telephones cradled to their ears. Hundreds of times a day, they match-up shippers to freight carriers and move loads of everything from potatoes to computer chips around the world...
Damman says a new start-up competitor in Plano named Total Transportation Services (TTS) stilled seemed to have an uncanny knack of taking away Exel's customers, "the competitor was like one step ahead of us but they could not have known we were going to see a certain person, they could not have known what we were going to talk about when we were going to see that person unless they were getting information somewhere. We knew something was wrong."
Two of the former Exel executives, Mike Musacchio and Roy Brown, are accused of installing a backdoor into Exel's computer system according to the lawsuit. An exhibit in the lawsuit features a series of email messages titled "You will enjoy this" that were exchanged between Musacchio and Brown last October. Musacchio who had left Exel a month earlier to set-up TTS asked Brown who was still working at Exel, "...how are we going to get into email after you leave?" Brown left Exel three days later for TTS after replying, "Not a problem. I have the back door password that only I know and no one else can change." Musaccho replied, "Beauty!"
The lawsuit alleges that the hackers brazenly created exact replicas of Exel's documents, such as contracts, budget templates, and spreadsheets, for use in connection with TTS's business. Damman says the looted information included a $300-thousand dollar marketing study, "It's scary...it's something we all have to watch out for in this electronic day and age that we are in." (more)
Counterespionage Audits are an important element of corporate security programs. If you don't conduct Counterespionage Audits, you need to. Please contact me for assistance.
