Basic principals to ensure that your business is safe from espionage.

Industrial and commercial espionage is an old phenomenon, as old as commerce and industry themselves

It is quite difficult to prevent company secrets from being snatched and used by competitors and such an effort will often require the constant work of an investigative agency or a specialist in this field.

There is however a series of basic principals on which company safety from espionage can be based:

the majority of confidential information theft does not come about by means of the use of sophisticated equipment (bugs etc…) but rather due to disloyal collaborators, it is therefore vitally important that you choose your collaborators well, it is important to ensure that there is a relationship with a reciprocal climate of esteem and satisfaction, and it is also important to constantly check up on them (even the most trusted ones).
Have each candidate checked out before employment
Have them sign a non-competitiveness contract prior to employing them, avail of the consultancy of a specialised lawyer.
Never leave complete information in the hands of a single collaborator, especially in cases where such information is of vital importance for the company (for example: a mechanical technician who is responsible for the mechanical part of the construction of a piece of equipment that is made up of mechanical and electronic components must not even come into contact with the electronic diagrams of the same piece of equipment. It is even better if he knows only a part of the mechanical aspect of the piece of equipment being built).
Never leave important commercial and institutional contacts in the hands of collaborators (in other words only the activity manager should deal with the largest and most important clients).
Make sure that all of the reserved areas and important company archives have an electronic trace and that they can be checked, also all office equipment, such as photocopiers, faxes, telexes, computers and telephones should be checked (this does not mean that telephone calls will be intercepted but you should have some kind of device that records the telephone calls made, the number of photocopies made and how much a determined computer is used etc…)
Check areas and telephones on a periodical basis in order to ensure the absence of bugs
Immediately remove any suspect person from the company
Train your collaborators to avoid chatting about their work or about internal company affairs too much.
Immediately isolate collaborators who are suspected of disloyalty before they cause vital information leaks to the detriment of the company.

Published on: 28 Jul 2004