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Practice Counterintelligence |
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While you get their secrets, protect your own. |
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You can take deliberate steps to keep competitors from learning what is going on in your business. For example, at one headquarters, a poster in the company cafeteria reminds employees that ''loose lips sink ships." |
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The media have run enough stories about corporate espionage to make managers aware of the danger. |
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There is evidence that Eastern nations apply Sun Tzu's lessons on "secret agents." A survey of 1,300 companies conducted by the American Society for Industrial Security revealed that China and Japan head the list of foreign countries possessing the greatest economic-espionage threat. However, next in line were France, U. K., and Canada.
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The practice of gathering competitive information is not confined to big companies as a smaller entrepreneur found to his surprise when he visited Japan. After a few drinks one evening, his host took him to a file cabinet where he exhibited a file containing information about his company. |
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The first bastion of counterintelligence is usually a memo that requires all employees to refer outside inquiries for information to the public relations officer. This is a good practice since the stories are legion from managers who tell about making a phone call to a targeted company and learning everything they wanted to know. |
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At the next level of protection are passive measures such as an office shredder in key offices and numbering systems to control key documents like new product plans. Every manager should be concerned about documents on his or her desk in view of visitors because too many people have learned how to read upside down. The best way to handle visitors is to meet them in a separate conference room with no visible company information. At the University of Tennessee football headquarters, the main conference room walls are lined with the ranking of prospective recruitsall covered with opaque pull-down shades. |
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Passive protection is not limited to the office. Although laptop computers are useful on an airline flight, keep in mind that the information may also be useful to a nearby passenger. |
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The top level of protection is active measures involving checking for bugs in phones and making sure that rooms engaged for outside conferences are secure and no material is left behind after the meeting. |
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