Quote of the Week — Espionage Truths

"If your company, or federal agency, was recently subjected to a suspected espionage approach, that’s not the end of the affair. Espionage thwarted is never the end. It could, though, be the tip of an iceberg long present but unseen issue... a key way to detecting espionage is to follow your instincts and protocols."
~ John Davis / From his article: My Friend, the Spy: Why Espionage Is Still an Inside Job

Quote of the Month

“Absent a very strong federal privacy law, we’re all screwed.”
—Al Gidari, a privacy professor at Stanford Law School.
(via The New York Times article above)

Quote of the Week

“Boston is a target-rich environment for anyone who is interested in intellectual property.”
–US Assistant Attorney General John Demers  more

Quote of the Week

“If you're a company doing business with other countries, you can expect that you're being hacked – because they want to know your negotiating position,” Charles Widdis, Security Strategy and Planning Manager at CitiPower and Powercor

Quote of the Week

"There are no hackers; there are only spies," ~ Eric O'Neill

Ponder of the Week

Lawyers and manufacturers are also vulnerable to corporate espionage.  Months can go by before they even realize they've been hit. — Mandy Simpson, CEO, Cyber Toa

Quote of the Week

"Corporate espionage is not an easy thing to detect; the whole point of a spy is to remain under the radar. In order to uncover this kind of behavior, you’ll need technical controls..." Dr Jamie Graves
more

Quote of the Week

"We have never had absolute privacy in this country." ~FBI Director James Comey more

Quote of the Week

"Lord knows how much industrial espionage has gone on." —Bill Curtis, a Fellow of the IEEE more

Privacy Quote of the Week

"The age of information-sharing is brilliant, as long as you have no secrets."
~ Heather du Plessis-Allan

 

TSCM Quote of the Month

"It's a well-known fact that businesses world-wide invest thousands or even millions protecting themselves from hackers and perceived cyber threats, but often fail to protect themselves against the threat of technical surveillance." –Peter Rucinski of Assure Technical, speaking about lack of attention businesses pay to finding bugs, wiretaps, spycams and other forms of electronic surveillance. (source)

Quote of the Day - On retaining privacy...

"It is amazing how lame people are. In today’s world, it is easy to hide. Just unplug." ~MW

The New York Times Quote of the Day :)

QUOTATION OF THE DAY

"This is the golden age of spying."

PAUL KOCHER, a cryptographer, on the National Security Agency's ability to circumvent encryption systems in gathering private Internet information.

Quote of the Week - Orwell Got it Wrong

"And surveillance has become entertainment, most ironically in 'Big Brother' where people compete to be under constant scrutiny. More revealing than their narcissism is the audience's enthusiastic voyeurism, playing at Thought Police from the couch." — Peter Marks, Associate Professor, senior lecturer in the Department of English at the University Sydney. He is also a member of the Surveillance and Everyday Life Research Group

New York Times - Quote of the Day - Tapped Out On Taps

"I'm so jaded at this point that I'm not surprised. And from my perspective, let them all wear wires. Let's catch everybody. Maybe if we clean out the whole system, we can move forward." 
~STATE SENATOR TONY AVELLA, a Queens Democrat, on the disclosure that a second state legislator had been secretly recording conversations with colleagues.

Business Espionage - Quote of the Month

“This is an absolute tidal wave of criminal activity, and we’re not even scratching the surface. We are literally having our nation systematically stolen out from under us.”

 – Brett Kingstone, a one-time victim of trade secret theft and writer of The Real War Against America, a book that details how his start-up company was crippled by the theft of trade secrets related to LED lighting. (more)

Security Quote of the Day

"Protecting classified information depends, today more than ever, on the security awareness of employees. They can literally make or break your security program." NSI, Security NewsWatch

Security Quote of the Month

"We're going to double down on secrecy..." 

Tim Cook, Apple, CEO (more)

Meanwhile... 

“Before, criminals used to steal money to become rich, but now they have realized that they can be rich by stealing corporate information.”

These words from a U.S. Treasury Department official send a chilling reminder to industry about the growing threat – and cost – of trade secret misappropriation...
 
Today, trade secret theft costs multinational corporations billions of dollars each year – and no company is immune. Any company with valuable commercial information, processes or intellectual property is at risk; and global companies from all sectors continue to experience significant economic losses not only from trade secret theft, but also from piracy, counterfeit products and corruption. (more)

What's your policy?

Espionage Outrage Reaches the Boiling Point ...and a solution.

Gen. Keith B. Alexander, (NSA)

...called the continuing, rampant cybertheft “the greatest transfer of wealth in history.” (bio)

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Shawn Henry, (FBI) 

...current public and private approach to fending off hackers is "unsustainable.'' Computer criminals are simply too talented and defensive measures too weak to stop them, he said. (bio)

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Richard A. Clark, (presidential advisor) 

"Yet the same Congress that has heard all of this disturbing testimony is mired in disagreements about a proposed cybersecurity bill that does little to address the problem of Chinese cyberespionage." (bio)

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Letter to the Editor - The New York Times

Dear Editor,

Richard A. Clarke’s op-ed piece, “How China Steals Our Secrets,” (4/2/12) states the current business espionage problem perfectly, but we need a solution. Consider this...

The Chinese secrets of: silk and tea production; making porcelain, gunpowder and paper, could not survive Western espionage attacks – not even when protected with death penalties. Espionage killed their economy, and the damage lasted for centuries. Obviously, competitive advantages are also National Interest Assets.

The one-sided, punish-the-spy security model, still being used today, never worked. We need to make it two-sided. There must be a proactive legal responsibility to protect.

The solution... Corporate caretakers must be held accountable for protecting their valuables; our national treasures. We need a law creating business counterespionage security standards, with penalties for inadequate protection. We already successfully employ the same concept with medical and financial record privacy.

Kevin D. Murray
Spybusters, LLC

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A cybersecurity law alone will not stop spying. 

If implemented, it will force an increase in traditional spy techniques, such as: bugging, wiretapping, physical intrusions and social engineering. (Remember, computer data is available elsewhere long before it is computerized.) 

Protecting our competitive advantages requires a holistic approach; a National Interest Assets law which would also...

• Protect the entire intellectual property timeline, from brainstorming and initial discussions, to the final product or business strategy. 

• Impose a responsibility of due care upon the creators and holders competitive advantage information.

• Specify compliance requirements aimed at countering traditional business espionage practices. Technical Surveillance Countermeasures Inspections (TSCM / bug sweeps), information-security audits, and information-security compliance procedures; safeguards which can be easily mandated and monitored.

This is a no-brainer, Congress.

The cost of keeping National Interest Assets safe is infinitesimal compared to current losses (not to mention the long-term effects). Just ask the Chinese.
~Kevin

How effective is antivirus software on smartphones?

"...my recommendation is to not worry about trying to get antivirus software to run on the phones themselves. Not only is it barely effective, but like any background process, it takes up valuable battery life and resources." Patrick Lambert, TechRepublic (more)